Like Father
by DawnTyrantEo
Summary: DCAU SI. Lex Luthor is not a particularly good parent to one Lena Luthor, a less-than-focused super-genius with superheroic aspirations and a cartoon's worth of villains to punch. Too bad she'll have to get past scientific testing, daddy issues, Batdad and the fact that people are capable of punching her back if she actually want to get to the punching part.
1. Chapter 1

"Ah, Lena," my father said. "Have you heard? It appears our city's 'angel' is an alien."

 _Why yes, father, I've known that since the day I left the cloning tube,_ I most pointedly did not say.

I swung my legs off the chair and landed on the floor, looking up at him as he passed me the newspaper. "Superman speaks," I skimmed, my reading comprehension far beyond my physical age- either six or whatever physical age I happened to be right now. "Man of steel from alien world of Krypton, empowered by sun's energy, declares duty to use his powers for good." I snorted. "Do you think he just has to glide every time he enters a shadow?"

"Please, it's not going to be something so... mundane, as that," he said, passing off a clipboard to Mercy. "His story is... Too neat. Too... _convenient._ " He stood up. "Personally... I don't trust him. Not when he says it's _natural._ No biological organism would be able to evolve a system like that- I expect he's taken some sort of alien technology for himself. Preparing to put himself in a position of trust."

"Or he's a magical alien with magical biology," I pointed out. "Maybe his planet's in a space ley line, or some other type of concentration of magic."

He gave me a look. "Space ley lines. Really."

"Dnimer rehtaf tahw denneppah tsal emit eh deirt ot teg em ot pots gnihctaw me le ep," I incanted, waving my hands around.

He paused a moment to translate, then glared some more- my spell had obviously been successful. "It's been made very clear. You can cast a few party tricks- just like the man who finally managed to convince me," he said. "Him, though?" He snatched the paper from my hands, and spread the pages, staring at Superman's visage in a way that no shipper would fail to misinterpret. "I suspect he's hiding the real source of his power- a technological source. If I can convince him to share- or, failing that, wait for a weakness..."

I clambered back up onto the chair, and returned to my project. "Neprahs ekil cinaclov ssalg," I muttered as I picked up the scalpel, letting both smugness and a little bit of mana flow through me as I near-literally waved said weakness in front of his face. I certainly wasn't telling- I had... concerns about Superman myself, but Lex was more the 'shoot first and let the press ask questions to make me look good later' type. But anyway... "He doesn't seem like the type who would be a willing hire," I pointed out.

"Every man has their price," he replied. He took a meaningful step towards the windows- looking out towards the city that belonged to him. "Every single one. Even Superman. I just have to _find_ it first."

"Well, that's technically true," I agreed. "He's got some price. Maybe you can give him enough money. But he's an alien- who said he wants money in the first place?"

He chuckled. "My dear, the price is always money," he replied. "Money is the key to power- with a few transitions, I can get him anything he wants." He leant over, looking at what I'd been toying with. "...Apart from getting your little pet project to work, perhaps." He wrinkled his nose in disgust at what I had before me. "It amazes me you still bother with it, when you could do everything and more with a little robotics."

Before me was a desiccated rat on a plate- the little bones had pierced through its skin, and it was shriveled up in a little ball. "It's coming close. This one is a lot better than the last attempt," I noted. "Lasted a lot longer before the cryptobiosis process began. I'm not far off a working formula- I know it."

As I started to pry apart the tissue layers, father turned to the window. "You could gather a lot more information from conscious subjects," he said. "Watch how movement affects the process, or see if their behaviour can stabilise the process. It could be the key to your success."

I rolled my eyes, and replied, "If I felt like being needlessly cruel, sure. A formula that works on an unconscious subject will be much more stable anyway."

His eyes weren't visible from this angle, but I knew what he'd done anyway. The little tut of annoyance just confirmed it. Like father, like daughter, I suppose. "Nothing is needless in the name of progress," he told me. "If you can do it, then-"

There was a sudden sound of a ringtone- my father's ringtone. He frowned slightly, and turned for the door- pausing slightly as his favourite bodyguard whispered something to him, getting a brief nod before he left continued.

"Excuse me a moment." The door closed behind him as he would-have-hustled-if-he-wasn't-Lex-Luthor'd out of the room.

I pouted. "...I had a speech and everything."

"You always have 'a speech and everything'," said Mercy, who'd remained in the room.

Mercy was what most people would consider 'a good person', apart from when she was performing, ordering or preparing to order or perform the wheneverly assassination, espionage or whatever other criminal act my father felt like today. On one hand, that amount of time was quite frankly excessive. On the other, he meticulously concealed such shenanigans from me, despite how many different ways I'd learned to hack the lower parts of his systems- meaning I got along with Mercy pretty well.

"If I didn't have a speech at every available moment, he'd never hear one. And really," I said, "who doesn't want to hear one of my speeches? So it's only him that's missing out."

"And yet you always complain about not being able to do them."

I raised an eye brow. "Of course..? Why _wouldn't_ I try and complain at every possible opportunity?"

Mercy chuckled. "When you put it that way... I concede the point. Anyway..." She strode over to my table, and poked some of the fur on the rat. "So, you were going over some sort of... super-serum. Supposed to let you mix your DNA with whatever you want. What's it doing that causes," she asked, "this? His skin's nearly popping off like a wrapper in some places..."

"It's based on the genome of _Milnesium_ primarily," I explained, before I remembered to explain the explanation. (Explanations are far more complicated than they should be. Unless they're too complicated.) "It's a type of animal called a tardigrade, sometimes known as a water bear."

"A water bear?" she asked. "Like a seal with claws or something?"

"It's to bears what jelly babies are to real babies, unfortunately. They're microscopic," I explained, putting down the scalpel so I wouldn't start gesturing with it, "and they're famous for the sheer strength of their DNA. They can resist radiation, heat, cold- they undergo cryptiobiosis, which is sort of like hibernating, I suppose."

"You said the cryptobiosis was killing them earlier," she asked- Mercy was nothing if not attentive. "Doesn't look like anything a nap would do to me."

"The big difference between cryptobiosis and torpor is that the tardigrade has to dry itself out first," I said. "But tardigrades don't have more than a toughened outer skin- in rats, and I presume in people too, implanting the DNA makes their flesh dry out and shrink without the bones being able to compensate. Thus..." I pointed at the rat. "This happens. I tried taking out the genes necessary- I read a paper on tardigrades being able to take in foreign DNA, so I thought it'd act like a solder. It's still the only way I can find to splice in new DNA and keep it stable- but it's the cryptobiosis genes that are doing it." I sighed. "The paper was wrong, they'd just found some other cells' DNA by accident."

Mercy frowned. "If they got it that badly wrong, why'd they publish it in the first place?"

"Honest mistake," I explained. "Anyway, I found another animal that could do the same job- it's called _Adineta_ , and it's pretty much just a miscellaneous microscopic pond thing. There's a few things in there, actually- rotifer, lobster, some flatfish, a bit of shark. This is just a general health jab," I said, shrugging- "No super powers beyond frostbite immunity- long life, cancer resistance, that sort of thing. Without the tardigrade DNA, though, it all just falls to pieces."

"See, this is why your father wants you doing engineering or chemistry rather than biology and geology," Mercy said, somewhat amused at my failures. "You're as smart as your father- and you pick one field that's too chaotic for it and another that's already tapped out industrially."

"You never know," I said as I cut into the coelom, having had my fill of picking through muscle fibers. "Maybe we'll find a rock that we can use to brain Superman. I get the impression father would pay a fortunate for that, at the very least."

"Maybe you will find a rock like that," she said. "Or maybe you'll just find another one of those conglomerates you seem to hate so much."

Ah, yes. Conglomerates. The worst type of sedimentary rock. "Anything's better than conglomerate. Apart from psamite. I've told you how much I hate psamite, haven't I? Worst thing in the world..."

Mercy went quiet. Slowly, I turned towards her.

She was smirking. She knew something. "What _is it._ "

"There's one thing you hate more than psamite," she noted.

 _What could it-_

Oh no. No no no no no.

"We've got another evening social event coming up," she told me, her voice full of carefully-concealed glee. "Three days. Make sure you've set an alarm."

"...Thank you for the warning," I told her. "Also, I hate you."

"I know you love me really," she said. "Now, I've got to make sure your dad stays in one piece- enjoy the dead rat!"

"...I will," I said solemnly, glaring at it as I waved her off.

 _...Now... Back to figuring out what went wrong this time._ It had to be ready soon. I knew that between my father's latest robot being thoroughly explodificated (which would be roughly now) and Superman beating up a giant robot tyrannosaur, he'd be weakened enough by kryptonite to bleed... and that meant kryptonian DNA.

It was a thought I most certainly had never squee'd at.

The only thing was... I had a nagging feeling that I'd forgotten something important. Sometimes I had dreams- reminding me of what I'd forgotten- but the only recent one had been about Lobo, and he wouldn't be here for a good while at least. And I'd already accounted for that a while ago. So what was it...?

...Eh, it couldn't be too important if I'd already forgotten it. I sharpened my knife again.


	2. Chapter 2

Adorably Lex-reminiscent suit? Check.

Similarly-adorable anti-Lobo dolphin-themed necklace, even though it's porpoises I throw money at conserving? Check. (Side note- I had to hack that money from LexCorp. As usual. My allowance is primarily determined by my ability to subvert father's lesser bank accounts.)

Two-heads and two-tails coins, for cheating at coin flips when my fellow six-or-seven-whatever-year-olds are being little shits, and also for use against Two-Face in the unlikely scenario he visits Metropolis at this specific place and time? Check.

Acid dropper and hand lens, in event of needing to analyse rocks or dissolve extremely tiny pieces of kryptonite? Check.

A lighter, some chalk, one of those instant-freeze pack thingies and a hand mirror? Check.

It's a superhero universe and I have both time to prepare and metaknowledge to prepare with. If an adventurer would bring it, I'm trying my damned hardest to do the same- and as long as I'm either six or the daughter of Lex Luthor, I can get away with it. I'm not quite sure which.

(I'm not quite sure why the 'daughter' bit is a thing. Part might be that I don't really see Lex as a guy to treat a son as anything but competition. Another is that one time somebody tries to kill the world's entire male population, that sounds unpleasant. Perhaps I'm supposed to talk to Poison Ivy at some point, but... eh. Plants are boring. It's not in the plans at any rate.)

I looked in the mirror. I was more than a little bit similar to my father- he'd performed the classic 'me, but with various other genetic donors for the sake of aesthetics and capability' schtick. (No additional magic genes, alas- only parlour tricks until I can mod in something myself.) Dark green eyes, relatively strong features for my age, a strong build- general Lex Luthor, Female Midget Edition. Apart from the baldness. That's a weird sort of gingery-blonde colour that I keep in a pixie cut, because hair is good but inconvenient.

(Now the subject's been brought up, another reason for being female may be to avoid baldness. My head needs to be covered in a fabulous set of hair at all times and I won't take no for an answer. But I digress.)

Satisfied that I looked neat enough to avoid being told to go back and try again, I stepped out of the room with a curt nod. "Father."

"Lena," he replied, frowning. "You've stuffed your pockets. Again."

This was true. However, I was a little brat and could get away with it- the perfect reason to continue doing so. "I've been working on my packing skills," I said neutrally. "And made a few alterations to the pockets."

"Mmh." His expression hadn't changed. "Take out a few items. You may keep the rest- it's good practice."

I immediately picked out a few rolled-up pieces of tissue paper from my pockets and placed them in the bin I'd strategically moved next to the door. Then I did my best who's-your-favourite-and-smartest-girl-ever smile, purely for my own amusement.

He sighed, bringing a palm to his face for a moment. "I don't know why I'm surprised- come on."

We headed for the elevators, Mercy moving slightly ahead of us in order to do bodyguard things and press the buttons. Because apparently Lex needed someone to do that for him. The doors clicked shut neatly behind us, and pleasant music came out from the speakers as the elevator descended.

"The music again?" Lex said, frowning at the bright and cheery tune.

"I like it." Apparently I was unique in my appreciation for elevator music, in this life at least- I never really heard it in my first one. Mass Effect elevators were great and nobody can tell me otherwise. (Lex could probably fix the elevators with ease, but he was a busy man. As it was I was just stoking the fires of the IT department's hatred of me with my shenanigans. All hail Lena Luthor, Chief Of All Petty Evils.)

"I heard the little gremlin made it personalised to respond to whoever's using it," Mercy noted. I smiled internally- I enjoyed knowing my hard work was being 'appreciated'. "Plays that Macaron song every time Chef Walters uses it. Drives him nuts."

"That's good," I said, keeping my features carefully schooled. "I was hoping my feature recognition system worked properly. The initial prototype appears to be a great success."

I remained steadfast in my supervillainous stare into the wall, mainly so it wouldn't falter. Father was giving me a judging look for my shenanigans. I just knew it. But the reporters would be my salvation.

The elevator opened. True to form, the reporters were already pressed up to the glass.

Father tapped my shoulder- I looked up. "I replaced it with one-way mirrors," he said, glaring and with a note of disapproval in his voice. "In the future, make sure you use your skills for something that doesn't disrupt my facilities."

I looked up sheepishly... Then I raised an eyebrow in confusion, looking up at him. "Wait," I said, pointing at the lights inside and the slowly darkening street beyond, "doesn't one-way glass only work when the inside is darker?"

Mercy answered on his behalf. "Not at LexCorp, kid. Not at LexCorp."

Then we were at the door, and I steeled my features, blotting the reporters out of my mind. In most situations? Ignoring people worked wonders for solving problems. And I was very good at it.

Now if only that meme that said I was Batman went away, all would be perfect. Apparently Luthor genes make for being supernaturally talented at glaring.

We stepped through the barricade of camera flashes, Mercy holding the door as I barely remembered to climb in with dignity rather than performing the sitting-down equivalent of a dropkick. She shut the door behind me. "Y'know, if those reporters had something better to do," I said , "my life would be a lot less stressful."

"They always have something better to do," he responded in an irritated rumble. "They just haven't realised it yet."

"'Yet'?" Mercy questioned

"A fair point," he conceded.

I tuned out to watch the skyline.

I personally prefer old cities with some good old-fashioned stonework- none of this 'old is a hundred years ago' or however old 'us' American folk say it is. Give me a good cathedral over a skyscraper any day.

But Metropolis is beautiful in its own right. All polished glass and highrise steel, in a city that was clean in a way that my universe simply wasn't. It may have been a high-rise tangle of roads and towering, monolithic buildings, but this place had moved beyond diesel and petrol, and the rubber for the tires (which normally wears off to make road dust) must have been ten times better- it was almost as clean by the roadside as it was in the middle of Rivers Park.

Lex Luthor says he owns half the city- and it's true, but most people think he just means the buildings or the businesses. This, though? The city wouldn't be like this without his influence. When he started up, the place was more like Gotham than anything else.

People say Superman is the Man of Tomorrow. Maybe he is- but he's preserving tomorrow, not creating it.

...Well, apart from the whole mass inspiration thing, which is kinda the point, I guess. Great guy, even if the cartoons in my last life biased me a bit. But I'd like to see him punch air pollution in the face.

(I'm calling it. He'll manage it at some point. There's a whole lot of supervillains in this world and I don't know a fifth of them.)

"Who are we meeting today?" I asked, continuing to stare out at the skyline beyond.

"Bruce Wayne has expressed interest in a research partnership," my father said. "My last major deal is on the verge of completion, so it's time to look for the next one."

Well now- that piqued my interest. LexCorp and Wayne Enterprises? That would produce something impressive. "Medical?" I asked, turning away from the window. "I heard he puts a lot into that sort of thing."

He chuckled. "No, there's no profit in medicine with Wayne Enterprises," he replied. "The man's got talent, and has a good eye for people, but his business sense is less than stellar. He barely even sells that stuff at a profit."

My eyebrows knitted. We... didn't exactly see eye-to-eye on that sort of thing, but I was six and he generally refrained from bringing those topics up. "Oh."

"Would space exploration be an acceptable alternative?" he noted with no small amount of amusement. My eyes lit up greedily. "My sources indicate he's stumbled across a few new metal alloys of particular use, particularly resistant to shock or erosion- likely retrieved by that vigilante fellow he keeps in his city. I considered espionage, but Mr Wayne is a powerful man, even should he be coasting on the expertise of his parents."

I blinked. "You think Batman got it for him? Rather than," I said, "his legions of research scientists or whatever he has?"

Luthor turned to me, with the usual long-suffering expression he got when interacting with me for long periods of time. "Yes," he said sardonically, "'Batman'... I've researched some of the more well-recorded incidents, and his armour seems to have been improved to a similar quality as this alloy at about the same time." A smirk grew across what I could see of his reflection. "And Wayne isn't exactly the sort to go looking for materials perfect for body armour. I suspect the Batman sells off captured technology and recieves a bounty from Wayne Enterprises- even if they had to produce ten of those 'Batmobiles', they'd still pull a profit if they invested the knowledge wisely."

"The guy probably needs ten Batmobiles in that city," I noted. "But you have to promise to make them visit Europa."

"Europa? What, you think we'll find moon rocks in Scotland or something?" Mercy spoke up.

I giggled in amusement- getting halfway through it before I coughed, pretended it never happened and continued speaking. "It's a moon of Jupiter. It may or may not have a giant frozen ocean full of ice worms, which is the best kind of giant frozen ocean."

"I'll consider bringing it up," said Father as I saw the skyline slow down. "But we're at our destination." We were somewhere on the riverside. The building we'd stopped in front of was intensely decorated- sculpture and gilding mixed in with fine red paint and other such nonsense to produce a rather impressive view. My father adjusted his tie slightly as Mercy opened the door. "I believe Mr Wayne is known for his ineptitude in scheduling- he should be here soon."

He stepped out, letting her close the door behind him. I pushed open my door myself, milliseconds before Mercy reached it. I considered it a competition. Mercy considered it annoying, which was enough to make it competitive.

Father started his normal slow, languid walk that he did whenever he didn't have somewhere to be. He said it made it look like he owned the place- which, to be fair, he usually did. It did nothing to satisfy my endless impatience, though, which was why I tried to spend time with my father only when he was busy with something.

"What do we have today, Mercy?" my father asked, tilting his head slightly to take in the smell of food wafting from the restaurant doors.

Being a person whose preferred flavour of food was 'food flavour', I once more let my attention wander while they-

"Lena?" Mercy spoke up. "Were you listening?"

"Oh, no." I looked back up at her. "Sorry. What was it?"

"Sea bass, dear," Lex said, not bothering to look down. "You don't eat sea bass."

"I eat sea bass."

Mercy huffed. "You never eat any fish."

I quirked an eyebrow. "Environmental concerns. I love fish. I just don't make plans for it."

She gave me a flat look. "When was the last time you actually ate fish, Lena?"

 _Err..._ I shrugged sheepishly, and we entered the restaurant.


	3. Chapter 3

It turned out that Bruce Wayne's reputation for tardiness was well-founded.

I usually got quite irritated at that sort of thing. Fortunately for him, he was Batman, and-

 _Wait, if he's in Metropolis, that means he can't be Batman right now. Unless Alfred is Batman right now._

...The Batman Rule of Forgiveness still applied, regardless of if he was late directly because of being Batman or not.

However, just because I wasn't annoyed at Mr Wayne, didn't mean I couldn't be annoyed at my circumstances.

"-Super Singer Green is the best Super Singer!"

Currently I was very annoyed.

"Nuh-uh, Super Singer Red! He's so cool, so he's better!"

Small children will do that to you when you don't have the veto power that being a grownup brings.

Currently, I'd been sat on a table with a bunch of other people of similar age to myself. Normally people praise me for my helpful and tolerant attitude, but this group were what were known as 'a pair of little shits'. Introducing-

"That's stupid," said Ramona Chez, hailing from some perfume company that had hired Poison Ivy before she did the whole supervillain thing. "His... his screeching makes my ears hurt! Super Singer Green!"

"You're stupid!" said Charles Mephisto, hailing from some paint company that had suffered from a Firefly-induced explosion at some point. "And that's final," he added imperiously, obviously mimicking his parent or something.

Ramona reeled, trying to think of a comeback... before she turned to me. Dangit. "Lena!" she declared. "Tell him he's stupid!"

"No."

"So you are stupid!" declared Charles in triumph. Ramona sniffled.

"That's also incorrect," I said blandly, desperately trying to summon a supervillain attack with my feeble brain-meats.

"Wait- so who's right!?" Ramona demanded angrily.

 _Alpha Plan Uno- Attempt to make them both accidentally admit to being right._ "Have you ever heard of subjectivity by any chance?"

"...Of course we have!" she declared, sticking her nose up in the air like a seal on a rock, except without all the chubby adorableness and amusingly keen balance that a seal on a rock is cute because of.

"Yeah!" said Charles. (So basically like a really ugly seal with no sense of balance. On a _chair._ )

"...So who's right!?"

Alas, Ramona had seen through my magnificent tactics. Or she was too dumb to be fooled. The latter seemed more likely, seeing as anyone here who'd been born from a rich family generally spent more money than time thinking. (I came from a cloning tube. Totally doesn't count. And the Bat Family isn't here yet.)

Either way, my initial plan had failed. _Damnit. Beta Plan Dos is go- be correct and use the smugness to shield yourself from the fallout._ "Subjectively, Super Singer Pink is the best."

They looked at me like I'd grown a third head.

"They're all good singers," I explained, "but Super Singer Pink has the most fluorescent costume. And she sung Karate, which is the best one they've done so far. Thus, she is subjectively the best Super Singer out there."

They looked at me.

I sipped my ultra-classy my-dad-paid-a-lot-of-money-for-this lemonade, which to be quite frank was fairly similar in quality to the stuff you could get from any decent restaurant. Still, I accepted things regardless of their origin, and lemonade was most reasonably included within that rule.

Unfortunately, neither lemonade nor smug could not protect me.

"That's stupid!" they shouted in unison, before simultaneously starting a rant I couldn't actually hear because of the aforementioned shouting.

 _Sigh._ For a few moments their ire was directed solely at myself, until a "No, Singer Red!" popped out and they turned to each other with renewed ire. As their shouting began to meander towards each other again, I did the only logical thing. _Gamma Plan Tres is go._

The only logical thing to do, of course, was summon Batman to save me. I leaned on my wrists in a manner that would let me secretly perform a Bat Signal with my hands, and thought really hard about Batman crashing through the ceiling.

As if on cue, Bruce Wayne and Tim Drake finally walked through the door, the older Wayne putting on a convincing chuckle as he entered. My head popped up in interest.

Tim's eyes flicked over me, then over Charles and Ramona. I read his lips as he turned towards BatDad- "...You can't be serious," he said.

 _Oh. Yeah._ I was technically one of those bratty kids about three years younger than him that he was nevertheless expected to sit near and get along with. My opinion was clear- _Sucks to be him, I guess._

I attempted to read Batman's lips as well, but promptly found myself to be observing a load of incomprehensible gibberish. Because Batman, and also because I suck at lip reading. Probably the latter mostly.

Bat Jr huffed. "Fine," he muttered.

As he approached in the manner of a dead man walking, the two dueling sharks that were dominating the table's conversation smelled blood in the water. Charles turned towards him.

I glanced around the room. Their faces were poor imitations of a few of the adult's condescending looks. I suddenly got the sickening feeling that the little shits were going to say something they really wouldn't have wanted to say if they knew what it actually meant.

Alas, my faith in humanity had its regular shattering a few moments later. "You must be Mr Wayne's next pity project," he sneered.

I blinked. _They did,_ I thought, gritting my teeth. _They actually went and copied some rich jerk I wouldn't even feel bad punching._

"Oh, this is him? The world's a better place if his parents were as ugly as he is," said Ramona disdainfully.

 _Oh, that one is even worse,_ I thought, seething as I gave them both a pointed look. _When I figure out whoever taught them that, I'm draining their bank accounts the moment I figure out how._ They just rolled their eyes at my look.

Tim slowed fractionally, before he sat down. Then he locked eyes with the spoiled brats.

Behind the noise of the adults talking as they welcomed Bruce to the table, I could suddenly hear a distinct and ominous silence surrounding our table. Which was truly impressive, seeing as glares are generally not known for their sound-muffling properly.

"...Excuse me, I need the bathroom," said the first one. The second one didn't even do more than stutter before she hurried off after him.

I continued to sit there in stunned disbelief for a moment, as Tim picked up his knife and fork- the correct ones for needlessly fancy dining, may I add- and shoveled a too-large chunk of seabass into his mouth.

I took his cue, returning to my meal. The silence lasted for as long as I had food- which was not exactly a prodigious amount of time. I glanced at the time on the wall- it would be a few minutes before dessert.

"...Do you happen to know anything about hacking?" I ventured.

Tim gave me a look. "Why would I need to know anything about hacking?" he questioned in turn.

"The specifics would be impolite to mention at the dinner table," I told him, lowering my voice, "but the reason for knowing those aforementioned specifics is because I'm currently trying to figure out a more practical alternative to a top hat that would go with a domino mask and cape."

I watched it give him pause. Then I startled back slightly as he leaned in, his features twisted into a grimace. "You're planning on becoming daddy's little supervillain, aren't you?" he accused.

"I- _no_ ," I flatly responded. "A well-meaning but incredibly stressed-out alien and a certain bull-headed baldy are about to start the bickering of a lifetime. It's going to be like an old married couple _directed by Micheal Bay._ They're either going to blow up an extraordinary number of things or start kissing immediately before they take over the world, and though I'm sure either option would suit the two of them just fine, I happen to enjoy Metropolis remaining both unsploded and untyrannised. In the meantime, there's less criminals in Metropolis than in Gotham- but they're still here, and they still need fighting."

Tim gave me a look that made it quite clear on what he thought of that.

I ignored his silence for speech purposes. With lemonade in hand, I posed dramatically. "Someone has to be responsible. And that someone... is me."

"...You're _six_ ," Tim very reasonably hissed. "You _can't_ fight crime. You're just going to get killed. Or worse."

"You're _nine_ ," I countered, before taking a moment to consciously keep my voice low. Bad habit of mine to speak much louder than strictly necessary, alas. "Since Batman approves of that age, all I need to do is make a super-serum to make up the difference and I'll be fine."

"You. Are. _Six_ ," he said, the absurdity of the conversation getting to him. "And you think you can both _make a super serum_ and _use it to fight crime._ "

"The preliminary results are promising. Even if there's a lot of dead rats involved," I clarified, just in case Batman hacked my computer later. "It's all very ethical but there's a lot of dead rats."

"Look, just..." Tim sighed. "Don't go sticking needles into yourself, it always goes wrong. You've heard of Man-Bat, right?"

"Yup," I agreed. "Which is why I'm specifically testing it until I can get reproducible results. And," I added, "making sure my dad doesn't get his hands on it. He'd be using it to try and get some schmuck to kill Superman within the week- oh, one second, dessert's coming."

A waiter, his clothes impeccable, approached bearing a glistening tray adorned with half a room's worth of sugary goodness. I gratefully recieved the apple crumble that father had probably told me I'd be having, Tim likewise thanking his waiter even as he gave me a surprised look for my own good manners. The waiters were mostly passive, apart from being ever so slightly confused by the two empty seats.

"Those two are probably coming back soon," I said dourly.

"Why are you so sure your dad's gonna try and kill Superman, anyway?" Tim said, frowning.

"Oh, he's totally jealous of him," I said, taking another sip of my lemonade- and frowning when I noticed I'd just emptied it. "Or he's about to become really mad he can't hire the guy. Metropolis loves him, he's unbelievably powerful, he doesn't seem the sort to accept a higher authority than the goodness of his heart, he's got a fantastic haircut-"

"He has good hair... so your dad's gonna kill him," he said, his deadpan reaching critical levels.

"Yup," I replied jovially. "History will prove me right, so I'll gloat later." I glanced at the side of the room, seeing movement behind the doors the two brats had gone through. "Last two things before they come back in- if you need any help in Metropolis, I'm sure you can detective up my phone number somehow; and second, if you're not gonna help hack whoever they copied that off, I'll settle for creating a mutual wall of smug against them."

His featured hardened. "This isn't finished," he said with an unnervingly good presumable Batman impression, before returning to the mask of 'perfectly normal rich kid eating pie' he'd presumably agreed with Batdad to keep up.

 _Guess that's a no on the wall of smug, then._

I projected my half of it regardless.


	4. Chapter 4

Outside the room of my laboratory, there was a little sign hung on the door. It said-

 _'Warning! Science in progress. Please do not enter.  
-Lena'_

The room was, of course, both locked and completely empty. On the other hand, a random warehouse with retrofitted lead lining and a cool motorcycle was currently very much active.

Honestly, the whole 'secret base' thing was pretty much an accident. I decided I wanted a cool motorcycle for my future attempted superheroics, at which point I figured out I needed somewhere to store it. That was roughly the point I gave the Wayne Enterprises technique a try, and figured out that hey, it's surprisingly easy to secretly buy unnecessary gear for purposes of punching criminals in their faces. So I bought slightly more than strictly required for said unnecessary face-punching.

Said gear was still in a work-in-progress state, but unlike my super serum, this progress was of the slow and steady variety rather than whatever variety results in nothing but dessicated rodents.

Most of the work had been both into, and because of, my pattern recognition system I'd been trialling in the elevators- and that I'd confirmed as successful earlier today with Mercy mentioning those context-specific songs having been there. To prevent a Brainiac-style Paperclip Maximiser or some other whoops-I-accidentally-a-hostile-machine-intelligence from occurring, it was currently hardcoded to only give variances on output in response to input- such as picking a song or pointing out a part of a hyper-advanced engine that could be shaved off.

I was planning to make an AI eventually- I'd plug it into the pattern recognition system when I was satisfied with its ability to consistently imitate upstanding human behaviour. With plenty of built-in safeguards, of course. But that was still a ways off- I wasn't making one until I had the capability to punch it in the face if it ever went rogue, because really, any mad scientist who isn't a _safe_ mad scientist is going to get a complementary Kryptonian Airlines flight straight to prison.

So, though it was _complex_ , it wasn't really _smart._ When combined with Luthor-empowered brain meats, though, the pattern recognition made various other tasks a whole lot easier. For example- the design for my motorcycle.

I decided to take a break from monitoring the monitors. I hopped off the computer chair, wanting to take another look at the aforementioned design. Truth be told, it neither motored nor cycled, rendering the original term utterly meaningless save for its description of a small self-propelled vehicle- but it was my motorcycle and, certain categories such as cinematic kaiju fights, sugary food and dinosaurs excluded, it was literally the best thing ever.

With a brush of my fingers, I wiped some dirt off the the stenciled letters on the side- _'DYNACYCLE'_ , it read quite clearly. (Not 'DINO-', alas, I couldn't figure out a way to do that without going full supervillain or Manbat mode.) Instead of engines, it had three retractable struts and a set of coils on either side- it was entirely true I wasn't a big fan of engineering, but electromagnetism? I could power through, mainly because I still had a certain measure of vindictiveness for it ever since A-Level Physics. Kryptonian shenanigans quite probably being related, according to the probably-correct records in the dream notebook? Helpful, but merely the cherry on top.

Either way, the design definitely seemed like a workable one for me. Minimal moving parts, unlikely to get stopped by tire spikes, able to remain on balance (if somewhat scratched due to bellysliding) when disabled... Oh, and able to fly like a tiny and extremely unsafe jet engine. Truly, the best of both worlds. I stroked the basically-glass of the windowscreen affectionately, and took a moment to will myself away from going on a test drive.

Being a six-year old, and otherwise never having rode a motorcycle, I had no idea how to actually drive the thing. Which was why I'd just adapted the pattern recognition into a self-driving program and added a mechanical failsafe to avoid it being unstoppable when hacked. Truly, emergent programming is wondrous and somewhat disconcerting.

A light came on- the motorcycle's touchscreen. I frowned, shuffling past the big ladder logo on the front to get a look... There was an intrusion attempt in the systems back in the tower.

An intrusion attempt other than my own, that is.

I _may_ have slightly overrode the recording controls in Lex's office thing for the sole purposes of being able to watch this exchange. Turns out that teaching your daughter vital computing skills via encouraging their subversion of your stuff on the condition it was completed without your awareness did, in fact, leave you with a daughter capable of subverting your stuff without your awareness.

I started tracing it backwards with the aid of my trusty program, following the intruder's progress until I reached a point where I could box them in. Then...

The screen shifted from the code to a live video of Robin's highly disgruntled visage, the background somehow remaining completely indistinct despite the crystal clarity of the rest of the image. If I hadn't already known about the Batcave, there would have been no way to guess merely from the picture. I quickly switched the camera in use from the cycle to the main screen and hurried over, launching myself into the seat in such a way that I could perform one of those cliche villainous chair-swivels with the knit fingers.

I allowed the swivel to slow to a halt before I spoke. "I've been _expecting_ you, Tim," I said in a needlessly ominous tone of voice.

He glared at me. "Cut the chat," he said. "You and Lex Luthor know our identities. What are you trying to get out of it?"

That gave me pause. "Wait, you think father knows?" I questioned, blinking.

"I-" This time it was his turn to be confused, though his utter distrust was still scrawled all across his face. "Why wouldn't you tell Luthor?"

"Because," I said, quite frankly, "I respect him a great deal for everything he's taught me, but that doesn't make him any less likely to choose the most immorally egoistical option regardless of the problem presented." I shrugged lightly, both hands up. "I think the less responsive citizens of Arkham would most strongly appreciate the idea of a Batwayne scandal, which- considering I enjoy living in an America which only regularly has an insane clown trying to drive its citizens to madness, rather than incessantly- is less than beneficial for myself."

"You think he could do that?" Robin growled.

"I _know_ he _would_ do that," I replied.

"...Say I believe that's accurate," said Robin- slowly, in a voice that sent shivers down my spine despite myself. "What keeps him from doing the same thing you did to figure it out? Why shouldn't we just take him down?"

"Egotism," I said simply. "His egotism," I hastily appended.

"You think that relying on egotism," he said, stressing the word like it were a criminal in a dark alley, "is good enough for us."

I gave him a look. "It's your only option. Currently, he believes Batman is a kook that can only fund himself by selling off spare equipment to Wayne Enterprises. That's as far as he'll get. He doesn't," I stressed, "understand _heroism_. He sees Bruce Wayne, and he sees a man that has no reason to do anything but search for more profit- with a few donations and reductions in medical cost to delude his conscience," I added. "He doesn't think Superman has a secret identity at all- who'd give up _that_ power to be a boring old _human_ , he thinks. You'd have to flaunt your secrets to make him wise up."

Robin remained silent.

"Y'know, Tim, this is normally the part where my father would shout-" I paused a second to get in that wide-elbowed, arched-back stance father slipped into when he was angry. "Say something, Small Batman! I double-dare you!" Then I returned to my normal position of hard-earned good posture (a double-miracle with my insidious fondness for video games). "I however, am currently awaiting my father's receiving of an unexpected visit from Superman, and so I can sit here quite happily until I'm able to stream it over."

"You're sending it to us?" he asked. "Why?"

"Because somebody has to know how ridiculous he looks when he gets indignant at an alien of sufficiently advanced biology. A peace offering, if you will."

"...I'll consider it," said Robin, continuing to glare into the screen. I, meanwhile, tilted the camera up and shuffled his glare to another window to try and ignore while I got on with some coding.

Despite Tim's ongoing interrogation glare, it was- surprisingly- his end that got interrupted first. A movement in the corner of my eye made me look up. "Oi, Teetee," I said, provoking a most marvellous little twitch in his eyebrows. "Something moving near you."

He glanced backwards- presumably trying to make sure I didn't evade his field of vision- before... well, I was getting the impression the camera blur was mostly from being pretty limited in focus distance, meaning I couldn't read his body language as he leaned backwards.

But I got the impression he was distinctly sheepish.

A shape in dark colours came into view. It stood in front of the camera, much larger than Robin- who evacuated his seat to make it available.

As the shape sat down, it revealed an unmistakeable face.

"Miss Luthor, it's come to my knowledge that you've discovered my identity as Batman," said Alfred.

"Ah, yes," I said, in another needlessly dramatic voice. "The _Batler."_

Well, not quite needless. This time, it had a purpose- avoiding unintelligible gibberish because _holy butlers Batman that is Alfred Pennyworth the best guy in the entire DC universe possibly excluding AQUAMAN! and Kite Man Hell Yeah._

"Welcome to this audio call, friend of Batman," I continued. "Your presence is an unexpected surprise."

He merely raised a single impeccable eyebrow. "As opposed to an expected surprise, Miss Luthor?" he questioned in the most fundamentally british accent possible. _Squee._

"Your humour is as the Namib," I approved. "I sit here in awe, and am honoured to be in thy presence."

He nodded slightly. "Quite, quite. Though I do need to say-"

His eyebrows knotted ever, ever so slightly.

 _Ooooooh no. Oh no no no no. Anything but that. Anything but-_

"I do hope you didn't attempt to undermine those rascals from dinner, Miss?"

I cringed. _Gah! Alfred is disappoint!_ I hissed internally. _Rectify! Rectify!_ "O-of _course_ not!" I said quickly. "Tim didn't feel like it was necessary, so it-it would be disrespecting of his wishes, and-"

The potentially-disappointed Look did not waver.

"-a-and I wasn't going to hack _their_ bank accounts, _honest!_ They were just copying- they were arguing about _Super Singers_ o-of all things earlier, _much_ less eloquence- which meant it was their _parents_ who said it- I mean, it was- _probably-_ so, so I thought I'd..."

The Look shifted slightly, and I went quiet.

Then, mercifully, blessedly, with choirs of angels behind him, Alfred closed the gates of hell and leaned back in his chair once more. "By my judgment," he said to the boy by his side, "it was merely good intention somewhat disrupted by her limited choice of role models." He turned back. "Now please don't pursue vengeance in the future, it isn't becoming of you."

Despite everything, I flopped backwards with the most palpable relief I'd ever felt. It was like...

Well. When Alfred Pennyworth gives you the vote of approval despite being the literal spawn of Luthor, it generally isn't an experience that is closely analogous to another one.

"And Master Drake?" he said, turning to the Robin-shaped blur in the corner. "While you've expressed a great deal of prudence, and your doubt is still well-founded, please don't attempt to stare down a little girl. It isn't becoming of you, either."

There was a muffled grumble, of a variety that was probably honest-sounding rather than the classic teenage 'yes Ma' you might expect.

"Now then," he said. "Would you... Oh?" An alarm noise had come on.

 _No time to waste._ "Show's starting." I switched the output to the Lex's security cameras output. Robin approached the chair, and leant on it as he watched from over Alfred's shoulder.

Mister Guy Who Wanted A Warsuit had already left, and the window was already open. _A necessary sacrifice for not, y'know, selling out my own father to Batman._ I patiently waited for the rails to start rolling.

"I'm afraid we already have a window washer," said father. _There we go._

Superman stayed quiet, glaring in from the empty night sky.

"Hmph," Lex grunted. "The silent treatment, eh?"

"You can't afford to keep this up forever, Lex," said Superman as he broke the script on the _third line_ of all places.

 _Zah?_

I leaned further forwards, starting to frown. He shouldn't have even had a script at _all_ until the last line!

"Whatever _do_ you mean?" my father questioned. In a single action, he stood up- then, he approached the window to lean upon it, and gaze upon the city beyond. "See this, ah... Super-man?" he said, gesturing. "This... This is all mine. I built this city. It was born from the technology I created. It runs so smoothly because I asked the policies be changed. Two thirds of it is employed by myself, whether they know it or not- and the rest listens to my every word."

"Only because they don't know the truth."

"What? And you think the truth's going to come out?" Lex questioned, glancing backwards at the Man of Steel. He laughed. "The people are all idiots. The judges can be bought and the cops become crooks the moment you flash a little coin in front of their faces. As long as they see Lex Luthor giving them the bread and circuses they want with a smile slapped across his face, the city will remain mine." He stopped. "I've made this place... _efficient._ Approaching perfection, because of one man alone. The only thing I need to change is my... complacency."

Superman shook his head quietly as Luthor continued to stare beyond the skyline.

"There's a world out there that _needs_ order, _needs_ someone to keep it in line. Gotham and Bludhaven, Central City, Midway City and Fawcett City... They're great cities, and they're all experiencing crime waves the likes of which they've never seen before." His back straightened slightly. "They need someone to be in control." And he turned to Superman. "I think, with the right contract... that you could help me realise this."

"He's not laying a finger on Gotham as long as Batman's around," I heard Robin growl.

Superman shook his head again, more so this time than the last. "That's not the world I want, Lex. It's not what anyone wants, not really. You have the ability to change the world. You're the biggest company in America. So why," he asked, a hint of pain in his voice, "did you sell that robot to terrorists instead of selling it with the rest of them?"

"Very simple," he said. "I prove its capabilities, I earn the goodwill of what was supposedly a competent group in one of the most unstable countries in the world, and I make a tidy profit in the process." He turned fully to face his nemesis. His voice hardened. "The world would have been better off if you hadn't _interfered,_ Superman."

"You know how to convince people," countered Superman. "And you're one of the smartest and most powerful men in the world. You don't need to sell off warsuits to criminals-" his voice was getting louder, now- "the conflict could have ended in _months_ if you just talked to them."

"And where's the profit in talking?" said Lex, an audible smirk in his voice now he had his opponent on the back foot.

Superman was silent for a second. "Is this really the world you want for your city? Your company?" He paused. "Your _daughter?"_

"Whoah now," I protested through the screen, "don't bring me-"

"All that?" Luthor said disdainfully, stopping my voice in its tracks. "It's nothing to me. Nothing. A legacy- nothing more."

I took a moment to tilt the facecam away while I continued watching.

"All they're good for is my _legacy,_ " he said. "A way for the world to know my name after I'm gone. Because that... That is what immortality is, Superman. That is what it is."

"...You're despicable," said Superman. I saw Alfred nod quietly, and tilted the Batcave screen away from me, too.

"And you'll soon be one more stepping stone on my way there." said Luthor, waving him off. "A Man versus the god- a fitting tale to add, I think. A modern Prometheus. Now, if you'll excuse me... I have work to do."

"We all know what happened to Prometheus in the end."

Luthor smiled. "Did Prometheus, before he gave away those flames, check if his foes could _burn?"_

The Man of Steel glared at him. "I don't. I'll be watching you, Luthor." And between frames, Superman disappeared.

The conversation was over. I disabled the override I'd used on the cameras, and the display flickered to black.

A little red 'RECORDING ENDED' flashed in the screen's far corner.

"W-" _Well that got somewhat more insulting than planned,_ I'd intended to say, but there was a quite frankly unreasonable tightness in my throat that made me huff in irritation.

Oh, and there was the watery eyes. Wonderful. Just what I wanted immediately before I went back to fiddling with coding.

A voice interrupted me. _Rule of three, Lena, Rule of three._ "Miss Lena," said Alfred, "are you-"

 _Flick,_ I thought as I pressed the mute button. After a second more's thought, I closed the connection altogether, booting them both back into the Batcave. Knowing my luck they'd have ended up complaining about it being past my bedtime anyway.

 _Now,_ I thought, _to work on something important._


	5. Chapter 5

I stood in front of the Dynacycle once more.

It had been a few weeks since Luthor's 'let's find new and interesting ways to make Superman disappointed in me' moment, which quite frankly he could do without repeating. The incident involving a giant murderous robot duck rampage had came and went (seriously how is Toyman still a relevant Superman foe), and coming up was a pivotal moment- preparations for the Lex Luthor Museum of Natural History's grand opening were in progress.

I'd told Mercy that I'd find a rock that could brain Superman. Luthor had already found it, and even put it on display- he just didn't know it yet. And now I was going to do science on it.

 _Super Geologist powers will soon be a-go._

Using the bullshit powers of the pattern recognition system, I'd created a helpful tutorial on stealth based off of the shenanigans of Batman and the two Robins. Still, this was to be my first attempt sneaking around for...

Well. Not _quite_ heroic purposes because of the whole 'stealing a chip of kryptonite', but still. Science.

I pressed the 'on' button on the motorcycle's magnetic thrust. Slowly it hovered upwards, and I pleasantly noted how there hadn't been a storm of ferromagnetic flechettes spontaneously being sucked in or whatever and eviscerating me or something ridiculous like that.

Motionless and silent in the air, I let it hover as a brief performance test while I hopped out of it and went to check my other equipment. The amount was... well, quite frankly excessive for a superhero, but sometimes you just wanted a utility rucksack rather than a utility belt.

Based off of a combination of geology field work and the average RPG adventurer, it had everything I could possibly need and currently carry. A signal whistle, chalk, a lighter, the normal acid bottle, one of those ice pack thingies, a towel in a waterproof bag, a yellow sun torch (in case of vampires or that time a guy filters the sun and Superman needs to punch him), a sheet of lead foil, some water, a burner phone, baking powder, a hairpin and a first aid kit.

(Most of it was very small. It was somewhat sad I couldn't bring a whole roll of lead foil, for example.)

Oh, and a taser, collapsible ten-foot pole, a can of pepper spray and a multitool aka swiss army knife. All on the belt., and all very good for use with the amazing power of an average six-year-old. Truly I am to be a master of fighting crime.

As for my costume... It was _adorable_ and no one was going to tell me I couldn't wear it. In fact, I was wearing it already.

It consisted of gloves (with spares in the pockets), a small purple jacket... coat... shirt thing, with a pair of baggy beige joggers tucked into some decent walking boots. A short yellow cape was behind that, with a quick-release red button on the front (designed to also be adorable). On the shirt thing there was my logo- a stylised ladder emblazoned on the front, designed to look like DNA with the frames meeting in the middle. And also an F. Plus a red domino mask, everyone loves a good domino mask. Ultimately, I'd decided to go for a headband rather than a hat- just to be slightly less of a blatant ripoff.

I turned towards the screen, where I'd set up the camera to act as a mirror. I looked at myself, and smiled.

"I. Am. Adorable," I said. "I. Am. A blatant Hat Kid ripoff!"

I thrust a finger into the air dramatically, for absolutely nobody to hear as I shouted at a computer screen.

"I. Am. Framework, Hero-In-Progress of Metropolis!"

I held the pose dramatically for a few seconds...

"Mmph, close enough to decent," I mumbled contentedly to myself as I packed up my gear to head out.

The Dynacycle had continued to not spontaneously explode or zoom into a wall. Carefully, I hopped on, and slowly not-revved the non-engine or however you say 'I made the magnet thingy do the stuff'- and it moved forwards.

I pressed a button, opening the super-secret bike entrance to the... whatever my secret base was called. Tentatively, I let the bike move forwards- I'd reverse-countershaded it to deal with the Metropolis nights, purple on the bottom to match the sky and the same light beige as my joggers on top to help it blend in with the streets. Apart from a bit of the seat, I needed a bit of purple up there to break up my own outline as well. I could do better- active camouflage systems and whatnot- but as a first attempt I was pretty satisfied.

Best of all? Totally silent, beyond a quiet hum of power. I'd checked in the infrasonic and ultrasonic ranges, too- even the dogs would have trouble hearing it unless it was next to them. Superman would... have a reasonable chance, because Superman, apart from the fact it sounded like every other electric hum in the city.

I passed the threshold of my base, entering the cool night sky. I set the destination and travel methodology- and then with a rush of momentum through my bones, it shot off into the sky.

A startled noise of intense discomfort at the supposedly-expected motion escaped my throat, and I breathed quickly for a few seconds before I coughed and adjusted my cape in a dignified fashion. Then I fixed my eyes on the vista ahead to ensure that we weren't flying directly into a building.

After a few seconds more to ensure the validity of my calculations, I finally allowed myself to relax.

The Dynacycle was cruising almost above the skyline, and the wind was pleasantly cold as it rushed around the front screen. Metropolis wasn't, as you might expect, a temperate city- it never snowed, ever, and sometimes it even got hurricanes. _Which is, in retrospect, exactly where you'd expect to find an alien that relied exclusively on solar power as the source of its powers._

It glided through the sky on an invisible cushion of magnetism, taking advantage of some generally-obscure electromagnetic interactions to do so. It was more nimble than I'd imagined (though it fit the calculations well enough), and being able to cut across roads from a few hundred feet above them made it a lot faster than most vehicles purely by virtue of journey length. I smiled. _Successful, so far!_

The screen beeped, and I took note- it had only been a short journey to my destination. The sky-scooter banked as it came into hovering range of the place. The building itself was beautiful, and yet I still sighed at the big 'L' tastelessly emblazened on the front of the museum.

"Don't you have _any_ taste, father?" I muttered to myself as I booted up the scanning systems.

 _Mmh..._ There was a big window, there. Luthor had relied pretty much entirely on high-tech electronic defenses, which meant anyone able to access the systems could pretty much waltz in like they owned the place.

I remotely opened a window and, thanks to its prodigious size and lack of effective security systems, drove in like I owned the place instead. Because I'm a jerk like that.

The museum was dark, so I unslung my backpack and took out the torch. The camera systems were under my control already, so they'd loop whenever I was actually moving. I could turn on the lights if I wanted- but inevitably I'd forget to switch one off, so the torch it was.

Slowly I passed through the side halls, looking for that classic green glow. "Where are you..." I muttered, my eyes flicking from exhibit to exhibit- I'd have time to look on open day anyway, I could afford to ignore them for now.

Then I entered the main hall. And my jaw dropped.

"Father, you _son of a bitch,_ " I said, free to curse at will in the museum's utter silence.

There, in the darkness, was not just a robot tyrannosaur- but a whole horde of robot dinosaurs. A parasaur here, a trike there, a whole pack of velociraptors...

Of the small, dingo-sized variety- which was about the only thing correct on the prodigious gathering of lizard-scaled, bunny-handed abominations. I approached, torn between awe that my father had built so many and irritation at the fact he'd all got them completely incorrect. Did he ever listen to a _single thing_ I complained about whenever I was discussing dinosaurs?

 _Well,_ I thought, _no. But still!_

I took a look at them- all animatronic, none bolted down... All dangerous. In case he... needed to murder someone in a museum? With the exhibits? I wasn't going to question his motives. Instead, I took a look where I'd expect a control panel to be, and quickly unscrewed the plate covering it.

 _It would be easy. So, so easy._

"...I shouldn't," I told myself. "People would notice..."

 _...eeaaugh. The flesh is strong but the mind is weak. Let's do it._ I carefully recoded it, and copied the procedure onto the others. It was simple by my standards, but it would do well enough for now. I clapped my hands, and the velociraptor pack activated- before trotting off in the direction of my craft.

 _I'm calling that my Christmas present if he finds out it's me,_ I thought. _As long as I can fix them up to being actual robot velociraptors rather than these things._

But my greed was purely a digression from the real point of interest- that, purely by virtue of my preference for dinosaurs, I'd vastly lowered Superman's chances of survival. No planning necessary- if he was locked in a room with three of these things and a chunk of kryptonite, he'd quickly be rendered less a superhero and more a badly-made pancake. And I couldn't just rewire them, Luthor would need a night's work to connect them up to his office, and they'd just get repaired-

Which left me one option. Grand Theft Kryptonite. Which was what I'd wanted to do in the first place but lacked a decent excuse for. I stretched out my hands and clicked my fingers, an evil grin stretched across my face. "Showtime," I said.

Which amounted to complaining internally as I first searched for the rock, then secondly as I had to heft it all the way back to the bike.

I piled the robot raptors onto each other, hooking their limbs together before having the one on the bottom clutch onto some convenient handles. I set up a magnetic tether to doubly secure them- it would be incredibly embarrassing for someone to get brained by a raptroid falling from the sky. Then, carefully, I sat down with the kryptonite sitting on my lap. "Chop chop, Dynacycle- we're bringing this back to the... secret base place."

Unfortunately my bike was not voice-activated so that was purely for my own entertainment as I pressed the button to actually perform the command. I flew up, and flew out through the same window again- as far as I knew, getting away scott-free.

Still, if I wanted to avoid anyone having a decent attempt at figuring out the thefts, backup might just be helpful. My father was smart- he might still find out the truth. Which meant...

I entered a command to reverse-engineer the intrusion attempt I'd used to open communications with the Batcave. "Boop," I said as I booted up the two-way connection.

 _"Wha- who is this!?"_ cried an indignant girl's voice.

I paused. "It's Miss Luthor, did I get a wrong number?" I questioned, utterly perplexed.

 _"No, this is Batgirl, and I'm-"_ There was a grunt of exertion and a thud of impact. _"-kind of busy with a home invasion here!"_

"Oh," I said. "I'll wait." I paused. "Unless you need some assistance? Wayne Manor, I presume?"

 _"Wha- yes! Just let me fight!"_ There was the sound of her hanging up, which of course did nothing to stop me from continuing the connection. Nevertheless, I muted my end as well.

"Let's see..." I checked the speed settings. "There we go. Let's hope this works."

I clicked it to the fastest one. The cockpit moved, starting to close up-

-then I cringed as my own voice responded, _"Warning! Obstruction detected. Stop that."_

With a fake sniffle, I knew what I had to do- I set down on a random rooftop, offloaded all but one of the robot velociraptors, and waved a tearful goodbye as the cockpit closed completely. "Farewell, friends," I said- "I hardly knew ye."

Then I was promptly pinned like a bug on a windscreen as the bike really accelerated.

I had always needed speed, absurd speed, if I ever wanted to be decent backup for the Bat Family. I was a Metropolis girl through and through, but only Gotham had superheroes anywhere near my own age. The Dynacycle was aerodynamic, powerful, stealthy- it could get me to Gotham in time with room to spare.

Unfortunately, I had made a mistake that was- in retrospect- terribly obvious, but only occured to me when I heard someone knocking on the window.

 _Going fast gets very loud very quickly._

I looked up sheepishly to see a certain fellow with nice hair and a red cape looking through the window with one eyebrow raised. He was most fortunate that I'd included space-capable radiation shielding in the glass, because otherwise he would be most unhappy right now. I undid the backpack to wrap the kryptonite in the convenient lead foil I'd brought. Then I attempted to communicate.

Because the aforementioned loudness and glass were both barriers to communication, I tried sign language. Superman shook his head- he didn't understand. Then I tried morse by knocking on the window, to which he nodded. Not the epic first meeting I was hoping for, but I'll take what I can get.

 _HLP BATGRL,_ I explained, pointing forwards to the horizon.

 _WHY U,_ asked Superman, tilting his head in confusion.

 _BAD RCK,_ I said, gesturing to the wrapped-up chunk of kryptonite. _WNT HLP FRM BATMAN._

Superman frowned. _WHY BAD_

I grimaced in sympathy. _PROB HRT U BC SCIENCE,_ I informed him. _RCK OF LEX IS BAD FOR U_

He frowned again, but nodded. _WL HELP, STY IN RCKT_

I nodded in thanks. _TY FRND_

Despite himself, he smiled back. _NP_

Then I jolted forwards- Superman, too, from my perspective- as the craft decelerated. Gotham alreay lay before us.

A towering maze of miasma and gargoyles, it was... well, Gotham. That city with more curses than I can count. The place where a guy dressed as a bat regularly beats up clowns, ecologists and ventriloquists and gets praised for it. The Dark City. _The_ Wretched Hive.

And towering above it all, Wayne Manor- and we were parking there.

Superman touched down gently. I landed with a light thump, and returned the cockpit to its normal, open state. I could see a grey getaway van parked by the roadside- with a frown I attached the magnetic tether to it. The front door was open already, and I could see the shimmer of ice from inside.

The Man of Steel flash-stepped to the door. He turned back to me- "She _is_ in trouble," he confirmed. "Again, stay here!"

I let him charge inside... and smirked. I wasn't going to break an agreement with Big Blue, at least not if I didn't need to.

But technically a robot velociraptor leaving the rocket wasn't me leaving the rocket.

I slaved it to the control systems, and eagerly booted up the systems. "Okay, Rudie, let's see what you can do!" I declared- with an artificial screech it leaped from the bike and charged in after Superman. It wasn't my precise plan for my superhero debut- not even tangentially related to my planned style in the future, actually- but _robot velociraptors._

 _Well. One robot velociraptor... I need to upgrade my bike._

Its cameras came online, and I got a good look at the chaos inside the building. Mr Freeze had attacked- with a bunch of scantily-clad girls in parkas with ice guns alongside him. Superman was firing his heat vision- directly at Alfred, melting the ice he'd been encased him. As Bruce charged towards Alfred to ensure his wellbeing, the ice-cold villain turned his gun on Superman-

-and startled back as Batgirl shot it out of his hands with a well-placed batarang. "Superman!?" she cried incredulously. "Don't you live in Metropolis?!"

"I was passing through, and saw a few people in need," he said with a smile, before he turned to Mr Freeze- arms crossed. "Unfortunately for you. Mr Freeze, is it?"

"It is," he replied. "I admit, this is an unexpected development- but I lost the feeling of surprise along with everything else."

"Let's see, shall we?" he questioned. Then he charged forwards- and put his hand directly through Mr Freeze's chest.

Bruce gasped. Tim gasped. Barbara gasped. I gasped.

He turned back and grinned. "His body's robotic," he explained. "Life support systems, mostly. But they're unconnected to the motor-" Then he cried out as he was blasted by a stream of ice-making stuff from one of his henchwomen.

 _If only Bruce were Batman right now,_ I sighed. _He'd be calling us both amateurs._ My robot charged, as it should have done the moment I saw the fight.

I pressed the jump button, and it tackled the henchwoman who had shot Superman, knocking the gun clean from her hands. I had it dodge backwards- a bola came out of nowhere, tying the goon up even as she tried to get to her feet. My raptor grabbed the ice gun and smashed it... which promptly exploded, turning my feed to static.

"Ugh," I groaned, jumping out of the vehicle.

Mr Freeze had been immobilised by Superman's strike. There was one henchwoman left- and she'd caught Batgirl and Tim out with a chunk of ice to the head. Batgirl was getting to her feet, rubbing the back of her head, but she wouldn't be up in time to avoid the criminal woman pulling the trigger.

Only one thing for it. I jumped onto the ice slide that had replaced the staircase, lashing out my ten-foot pole to extend it. "Mia eb eurt!" I cried- and the strike connected with the rear of her knees, knocking her to the floor.

As she got up, I... promptly realised I had no way to restrain her. On the other hand... I, unlike her, still had backup.

When the woman was almost on her feet, Batgirl pounced. A brief struggle proved her no match for the hero in martial arts- the handcuffs locked around her wrists with a firm click. The second... third...? protege of the Bat sighed in relief... and then glanced at her surroundings.

"That could've gone better," she said deadpan, looking at the destruction around her.

"You did well," countered Superman, landing on his feet near us- I glanced at the wall he'd been stuck to, and it looked like he'd laser'd his way out of the ice while I wasn't looking, judging from the melted craters in the ice where his wrists had been. "Mister Wayne and his associates are safe- that's all we could have asked for."

"Of course!" agreed Bruce Wayne, approaching as Alfred leant on him- tired, but apparently okay. I let out a quiet sigh of relief. "It's an honour to have you in my home, Superman," he said charmingly. "Though perhaps I could have redecorated first." He chuckled, looking at the destruction.

"Thank you, Mister Wayne, err..." Batgirl paused. "Superman." The name hadn't quite naturalised yet- it would need time still. She turned to me. "And you're that girl on the comm link?"

"Framework," I introduced myself. "Hero-In-Progress of Metropolis! Though," I rubbed the back of my head embarrassedly, "I haven't actually done anything in Metropolis yet. Apart from what I wanted to talk to Robin about."

"Yes," Superman said, turning to face me. "You said you had some sort of rock?"

"Yup!" I replied, popping the 'p' as I did. "Wait here a second, I'll get it from my cycle."

Then I took a look at the ice slide I'd travelled down to get here in the first place. I frowned- then nearly jumped out of my skin as Superman picked me up and put me on the landing. "Thanks," I said, and darted off to get the rock.

The kryptonite was- thankfully- just where I left it. I grabbed it, and headed back inside the Manor, this time staying at the top. "Catch!" I said, throwing it down- Batgirl caught it easily. "Superman, if you'd say peanuts once you've had enough exposure?"

The kryptonian tilted his head, confused. Alfred, fortunately, was on the ball. "It means 'ow, the pain, please make it stop,'" he informed the Man of Steel.

Big Blue turned to Batgirl and nodded. She unwrapped it, and a green glow washed over Superman's face.

The effect was immediate. He flinched backwards, covering his arms with his eyes, suddenly gasping and panting for breath. His legs began to tremble. "Peanuts!" he said breathlessly, and gasped in a fresh breath the moment the light was gone.

"What was that?" asked Tim, looking at the rock.

"A form of harmless radiation," I replied, looking down at them. "Harmless, of course, to us- at least in the short term. But its chemical composition suggests an extraterrestrial origin, and both its novelty and its half-life suggest it would have first formed... when Superman was a baby. And we've all seen that my prediction of its interaction with him was right."

"...You think this is a piece of Krypton?" he said, surprised.

I nodded. "Kryptonite, if you will. It was left in an open case in the Lex Luthor Museum of Natural History- at first I just wanted to check for excessive radiation, seeing as it was unstudied and glowed. But then I figured out its origins, and combined with the dinosaurs display being-" I gestured to the shattered remains of my poor raptroid. "-fully animate, I figured out it was likely a trap for Superman. I'm predicting a theft on opening day."

"And you brought Superman to us when you heard Batgirl needed help because...?" Tim questioned, one eyebrow raised.

"My bike was very suspicious while I was getting here."

Superman bobbed his head in agreement. "I thought I'd check it out. Turns out it was another hero- but I should really be going." He smiled and saluted, preparing to fly off.

A thought crossed my mind. "Wait," I said, "did we just have that entire conversation in front of Mr Freeze?"

As one, we all looked to the side- where Mr Freeze's body lay. Specifically his body- his head was... entirely absent. I blinked, and looked at Superman. Superman looked at Batgirl. Batgirl looked at Bruce. Bruce shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine," he blatantly lied to anyone who knew he was Batman.

"Either way," said Alfred, "you've been a great help to myself and Master Wayne. Please, stay a while- I'll-"

"Easy, Alfred," said Bruce, catching his butler as he tried to stride off and prepare a cup of tea. "You need rest- be thankful you weren't hypothermic." He looked at Superman. "We'll invite you another day- if there's a way to contact you?"

"I'll visit some time to organise it," he agreed. "There's a van outside- probably their getaway vehicle. I'll gather them up for Arkham." One at a time, he picked up the startled villains- and Mr Freeze's empty body- and took them outside. There was a sound of shifting steel, a faint rush of air, and then he was gone.

I turned to the others. "Well-"

There was a thump outside. "Framework?" I heard Superman say. "Your bike's attached to the van. Even though it's nowhere near it. Magnetism, maybe?"

I facepalmed. "We'll talk in a moment," I said. "And, err, good luck with the reconstructions."

Mr Wayne nodded. "Thank you," he said. "Though... if you took the kryptonite, why did you need to take the weapons, too?"

 _Damnit!_


	6. Chapter 6

"Lena!" Mercy said through the door, knocking. "Are you up yet? I'll be asking for a pay rise soon if you keep this up!"

I grunted something of debatable intelligibility through the door. It took a moment, but I heroically rolled off the bed, still fully-dressed from the brief nap I'd been taking. _Go me. Wooooo._

I'd been popping off to Gotham frequently enough to be making my father paranoid that Superman's grand plan to take over the planet was approaching fruition (because my bike is currently a literal UFO to the people of Metropolis). Mostly for superhero training. Which was... _extremely_ tiring _._ But at the same time, the Batcave's training sessions were paradoxically pleasant to join in with.

It had been the most I'd talked to people- not just spoken with or posted on a forum with, _talked-_ since in... well, literally forever, if we're assuming that different lives don't count. Which was the most convenient way to think, because when demonic possession and mind uploading exist, awkward questions are awkward.

Tim had a good sense of humour. He'd probably been learning from Alfred. Alfred himself was better, in regards to worker morale and politeness or whichever of that sort of word could actually describe what Alfred did, than every single member of staff Luthor had in his compensating-for-something tower combined. And Barbara just had an aura of legitimately-nice-person about her for reasons I couldn't quite describe.

Batman, meanwhile, was Batman. He spent most of his time glaring from the shadows, with the occasional word of... not encouragement, because _Batman_ , but putting in a word that would somehow convince me to keep pushing forwards with the training anyway. Even the boring stuff- which was a lot of it, because he seemed to be leaning towards superhero desk skills rather than combat. Reasonable goals for a hyperintelligent preteen, really.

I like to think we're the Batman equivalent of best buddies. Mainly because he really needs some.

Not that I had unconditional trust, not at all- I was forbidden from plenty of the cave, and I always had someone supervising me. But that was just good procedure, and I didn't blame them for it- they wouldn't be very good heroes if they weren't cautious enough to last.

Regardless, there were some objectively bad things about training with them. Like the fact it was always at night. _Every. Single. Time._ (Even if my own schedule was an equal factor in that.) All that crime-fighting training meant I was more than somewhat sleep-deprived, even if I did get a decent rest last night- and Mercy had been complaining about it now it was approaching regularity.

Buuut I'd finally got an alarm clock specifically for napping purposes once I was actually ready in the morning. Apparently being six makes it somewhat easier to fall asleep, which is one of the few conveniences of excessive youth. And being absurdly rich and the owner of a technological empire lets you get your six-year-old clothes that are equally good at not crumpling.

Combined, this meant I was a fully operational small child when I left the room with an "I'm up, I'm up," and some cookie cravings. _Go me. Woo._

I trotted through the corridor alongside Mercy. Unlike Luthor, Mercy didn't default to the overconfident amble- he probably drove her crazy with it too, same as he did to me. "You got any predictions for the museum?" she asked. "Beyond security upgrades since the theft."

It had been embarrassing to see on the news I'd left the other raptors on a rooftop. But, as much as I would miss them, they were home again now- their museum home- and stealing them twice would be pushing it.

"I'll bet an unknown quantity of smugness on the dinosaurs being inaccurate," I said, nodding. "And a block of psamite being in there somewhere."

"What is it with you and psamite, anyway?" Mercy questioned. "Isn't it a bit... I dunno, arbitrary?"

"Oh, entirely," I agreed. But a field trip with an entire valley composed of nothing but one rock will do that. "It's the worst thing ever regardless."

We stepped into the... well, I'm not actually sure what a room made specifically for breakfast is called. My father was very into the whole 'useless extravagance' thing when a good old kitchen table and some cereal would have done just fine. Still, breakfast was ready right on time (or rather, i was right on time for breakfast)- when I noticed Mercy walking off. She noticed me giving her a confused look.

"Lex ate before a meeting this morning," she explained with a sympathetic expression. "Wants me up there. Sorry, kid, but he needs bodyguarding more than you do right this second."

"Oh," I said, frowning. "I'll see you by the entrance, then." She waved and headed off.

Probably some sort of incredibly-illegal deal. Again. With people of less sense than money. _Again._ Because that's how Lex Luthor, most intelligent person in the world, rolls. If he didn't own the most technologically-advanced company in the world, built from nothing but a suspiciously well-timed windfall of life insurance from his parents... I'd call him a _total idiot._

After a few minutes of grumpily eating bacon and other such breakfast foods, I headed to the elevator.

I travelled down- since I was the only one there, my secretly still-in-place program started up the music- but alas, when I got to the bottom, Lex and Mercy were still not there. The lack of response from the press outside confirmed that the one-way glass was, in fact, still working. Then I took out my phone- smartphones weren't standard issue right now, but I'd invented my own and (with luck) I'd soon be getting some non-hacking-based pocket money for the non-graphene version.

I wasn't calling anyone- I was using the internet. _Ah, the wonders of using the world's most advanced communications network for the purposes of looking at animals being silly. Truly, technology is both amazing and inherently stupid._

Eventually, finally, Luthor and Mercy arrived downstairs. "Ah, Lena," he said cheerfully. "On time as always."

I nodded politely in thanks for the compliment, and avoided reminding him that he was, in fact, _not on time._ Fortunately it wasn't a long trip- past the conventional gaggle of reporters, into the car, a few turns and stretches of road, and we were pretty much there, only a few minutes later than we needed to be.

The museum itself was much more pleasant in daylight than in the dark. I smiled to myself as I looked over the local landscape, at the open space and copious quantities of grass in front of it. The reporters were staying near the doorway to the museum, this time- these were high-quality Lex-approved reporters, which was rather amusing when you considered _Superman himself_ was one of them. I looked up at the giant L, an icon to proudly proclaim who owned it. Looking at it, i couldn't quit blame him- it was almost non-tacky.

Then I noticed that there was, in fact, a _second_ giant letter L sitting like a statue in front of the entrance, surrounded by (admittedly rather pretty) flowers. I barely refrained from facepalming at the extravagance of it- the only reason I hadn't noticed it last night was because of the angle.

As with most of my father's general speech things, I split off from him and Mercy to go stand in the crowd. Lois and Clark were somewhere in the middle, so I stood vaguely near the back edge waiting for the entrance to become available. The reporter guy next to me had a pretty nice blue hat- really fancy, went well with the equally blue suit- which I carefully restrained my jealousy of.

Lex Luthor approached the top of the steps, Mercy settling into a flanking position of him- some other bodyguard with a quiff filled the space to his right. There was no microphone. The crowd was already small enough that his words would carry quite clearly.

He started without needing to clear his throat. "As you all know," he explained, "recent budget cuts have forced the city to close the doors of many of its public museums. Museums, though, are a vital gift to the next generation- which is why the Lex Luthor Museum of Natural History has been created; to help others learn the awe and wonder of science, just as I did at their age."

I vaguely heard a feminine voice mutter something in amusement. Lois, probably.

"In anticipation of tomorrow's grand opening, I felt that you- the elite of the Metropolis press- might enjoy a sneak preview of this brand-new, state-of-the-art exhibition hall. Though certain artefacts were somehow stolen in transit from their previous location-" _Blatant lies-_ "now that they are guarded by our state-of-the-art security system, they're safe enough here that we are comfortable keeping them without even cases to guard them."

I perked my ears- and sure enough, because I was expecting it, I heard a _'kerpow'_ noise coming from inside the museum. I looked to the left and right- no blue blue shot past, or anything so dramatic, but it was more than likely Clark was talented enough to evade even my keen vision.

"And now, I will be happy to answer any questions regarding the museum or its displays." Luthor smiled magnanimously, and looked towards the middle of the crowd. "Miss Lane?"

I heard someone step forwards. The- well, not iconic, she was a writer rather than a newswoman- but the well-known voice of Lois apparated from outside of my field of vision. _Curse you, shortness!_ "How do you respond to charges that the museum is really just a large tax shelter for LexCorp?" she questioned, her voice just pleased enough with the question to be both aggravating to my father and possessing the professionalism that had got her to this crowd in the first place.

Luthor frowned, pausing while he calculated his response. "LexCorp is one of the world's largest and most powerful companies," he replied. "Even a museum as great as this is negligible in cost compared to the profits that LexCorp makes- in preserving this country and building the future- and in return for the investments I personally provided, provides a service to the public as a whole. Next question?"

After that, he went for a few more of those controversial reporters- probably to make it seem like he were under attack or something- before going for the positive and strategically-inane. Apparently his personal favourite exhibited specimens were the totem poles, "though I suspect many of the city's fine youth- my own daughter, present here today, included- will have a particular fondness for the dinosaur exhibits."

 _Pfft. Put some work in first and then we'll talk._

Then, finally, the doors opened- and the crowd gasped. I trotted forwards, past the gaggle of reporters, and saw...

...A pair of thieves trying to pull their feet out of some sort of paste, directly next to a hole in the floor. That was not what I'd been expecting, to say the least. Superman was absent- and, looking back at the crowd, Clark Kent was still present, looking as surprised as everyone else.

 _Huh,_ I thought. _He must be glad the puttythrowers or whatever got installed worked- getting pulled out of work must be inconvenient._

Father was shouting about security, and Mercy was busy listening to father's shouting, so it fell upon my humble shoulders to talk to the press. I turned towards them with a photogenic expression on my face, as opposed to Attempted Batglare. "As you can see, we take a multi-vector approach to security," I explained to them, gesticulating slightly as I did. "The preview will be delayed until security and maintenance have ensured the safety of our exhibits and visitors. We thank you for bearing with us while the issue is resolved- please take a moment to enjoy the surroundings, as I will not be taking questions on the museum in the meantime. Thank you." I smiled and nodded politely, and stepped down from the steps.

A few reporters approached me, but I waved them off- until I saw the Daily Planet's sort-of-dynamic duo. "Ah, Mister Kent, Miss Lane," I said, greeting them. "I read your articles regularly."

"You must be Lena Luthor," said Lois, giving me an appraising look as I approached. "It's a pleasure to meet you- does your father mind you being away from the bodyguards?"

"Not really," I said, shrugging. "Perhaps it's to do with Superman? As much as my father dislikes him, he's certainly talented in what he does."

"You're a bit wordier than I was expecting," said Clark, classic farmboy smile on his face. "Mind if we take a few notes while we wait for the museum to open?"

"Not at all, not at all- though you'll have to ask my father for permission before you put anything in the papers, of course," I added.

"I guess it's an interview, then!" said Lois. "Lena, you said your father dislikes Superman. Is there any particular reason for that?"

 _Egoism,_ I pointedly did not say. But I might get away with implying it. "Boiled down, my father believes humans should stand on their own two feet- an equal in the cosmos," I explained, "rather than children. He believes that Superman represents an ideological threat- that regardless of how good his intentions are, he's limiting us simply because he takes away the _necessity_ of improvement."

"Such as what?" Clark asked. "Safety regulations? Military development?"

"And more," I confirmed. "Superman has done many things for us, and my father is concerned that people will begin to see those things as things they no longer need to do."

Lois looked ready to ask a more critical question, but I suppose you can't ask a six-year-old girl if they believe their father thinks letting a plane full of people die is morally correct. "Do you agree with him?" she questioned instead. "Or do you have a different view?"

"Not on that specific point," I told her. "I do believe we need to be careful around Superman- but that there's also more concerning things about the appearance of Superman than the man himself."

"What's your reasoning behind that?" asked Clark, with an interested tone of voice. _Great guy, that one,_ I unironically thought.

"Being careful about Superman?" I confirmed. "In purely physical terms, he's something we're not equipped to deal with- an example might be that anything designed to do heavy damage is designed to do it to large targets, like boats or tanks, rather than a small and roughly cylindrical object. And even a man as good as Superman could find a reason to turn on us."

"Turn on us? That boy scout?" Lois quirked an eyebrow. "You're kidding, right?"

"All it takes is something hurting him enough," I explained, thinking of Justice Lords and High Chancellors. "Not physically- emotionally. I think the risk will be mitigated once he builds a social circle of like-minded people, to keep him balanced, but in the meantime all it takes is someone driving him to the point where he decides 'This doesn't protect enough people.' And the most likely point of failure for locking up a guilty man is the trial. It's a concerning thought, isn't it?"

"That's... a disturbing thought," she tentatively agreed.

"You can say that again," said Clark, frowning. "But you mentioned there being concerns beyond Superman himself?"

I nodded. "Have you ever heard of the Fermi Paradox?"

Clark nodded. Lois shook her head.

"It's quite interesting reading, really. As long as you're not living in a universe with aliens among us, which unfortunately ceased to be true a few months ago. It's about-" I turned my head towards a sound at the doors. My father had clapped his hands, calling for attention. "Ah, curses. Looks like the tour is back on," I said disappointedly. "I'll finish this later- wait by the entrance once you're done, perhaps?"

"Sounds good," Lois said with a nod of her head. "It's been good talking to you, Miss Luthor."

"A real pleasure," agreed Clark, smiling despite all the shit-talking I'd just done to his other identity.

"Keep up the good writing," I replied, my expression equally jovial, before I hurried up to catch up with my father.


	7. Chapter 7

To the untrained eye, the inside of the museum was just as beautiful as the outside. But there were little clues.

The geometric patterns on the floor looked like they'd been cut from the original, smooth surface and replaced. The dimples near the velociraptor pack. The enormous hole in the wall where those two criminals had blown a hole in it. This place was expecting- and getting- a whole lot more thievery than originally expected, and its security had needed upgrades to withstand it.

But... for all its flaws, and for all my father's less-than-stellar motives, it made a pretty decent museum. Plenty of good crystals, a wide variety of totally-not-illegally-obtained stuffed mounts, some bugs and stuff (including a few that would be good to nab the DNA from)- pretty much all that you could ask for from a museum of natural history.

There was an inexplicable amount of anthropogenic exhibits, like the totem poles my father loved so much, but I could let that slide. It was still pretty cool.

My father did not, however, seem to realise his mistakes in regards to the palaeontological section. He was smiling as he approached me, in that 'I'm-so-proud-my-daughter-is-so-smart' way.

"I'm surprised you're not spending more time with the animatronics," he said affably. "They're the finest tech, with the most rigorous reconstructions science and art could make."

"You might want to pay the artists less next time," I grumbled.

He looked down at me, an eyebrow raised. "Oh?" he said seriously.

I looked back at him in warning. "If you're planning on disproportionate retribution-"

The man looked positively offended. "Now why would I do such a thing?" he said, surprised. "You, of all people, should know better than that."

 _I do know better than that,_ I thought. _There's no 'why' to ask, it's your default reaction!_

But we generally ignored this business. I skipped it over. "Either way," I said, knowing I'd either gotten through or (probably) hadn't, "there's a large number of quite amateur mistakes. They've got pronated wrists, reversed halluxes, lack the girth that gastralia suggest and possess extremely erect-"

"Lena, I may be a super-genius but biological jargon is not something I bother with," Luthor snapped. "Speak English."

"-gaits." I frowned. "They all have bunny hands, sparrow feet, supermodel bellies and kangaroo hips," I said, internally quite happy with my simplified explanation. "And that's not getting _started_ on individual issues."

"...I see," he said, and when I looked into his eyes I saw nothing but a big red 'show them what happens when they double-cross LEX LUTHOR' button being hammered like Tony Stark with palladium poisoning.

 _Sigh._

"I think I have a few phone calls to make, then," he informed me. "I shall see you back at the car later."

I nodded politely. "I shall talk to you later then, father," I told him, fully intending to ignore him for the rest of the day if possible as I headed back to the entrance.

I walked back- past such wonders as ancient Kaznian relics, a stuffed thylacine and an exhibit on metamorphism of sandstone- towards the entrance, where I was expecting Lois and Clark to be waiting for me. I was surprised to find it was just the latter, standing somewhat awkwardly in the entrance.

"Mister Kent," I greeted him. "Miss Lane's still occupied?"

The big man startled a bit, before chuckling embarrassedly as he turned around and realised it was just me. "Oh, she can never resist the opportunity to pick out a few more stories for later," he replied. "It's why she's on-track for those awards instead of me- but it does make sure I'm on time for the interviews I've already got." He pulled out that dinky little journal of his- the temptation to get him something technological for christmas was astounding. "So, the Fermi Paradox? What's that?"

"Good memory." It had been a few hours since I'd mentioned it, but any decent reporter would remember just as well as Superman would. "Have you ever wondered why we've been alone for so long, Mr Kent? Err," I interrupted myself, "in the universe, I mean. No radio signals, no stars being covered up by solar panels, no alien colonies- that sort of thing."

"You think it means we're alone?" He tilted his head, perplexed. "I don't see why you'd conclude that. Couldn't they just be too far away for us to notice?"

"No," I replied confidently. "If humans appeared one percent later in Earth's current history, Superman would have crashed on a planet before apes, let alone before humans. If humans appeared one percent earlier, our drive to improve and learn would have rendered us virtually godlike..." I shrugged. "...or possibly extinct, depending on how pessimistic you are."

"That's... certainly a narrow window of opportunity," Clark agreed. "But how do we know there weren't a hundred other Supermen who did end up on planets like those?"

"It's not about Superman," I said. "It's about the Kryptonians. Up until its destruction, there was a planet of equal technological progress- meaning we'd also expect a hundred other Kryptonian civilisations that are yet to evolve or so far technologically progressed." I paused for dramatic effect. "But we don't see them. So what's more likely- that Krypton just so happened to be the only other advanced civilisation in the galaxy... or that something awful happened to them?"

"Something awful _did_ happen to them," Clark noted. He smiled- I could almost hear his amusement.

I raised a finger in defiance, before realising that I had indeed just said an incredibly stupid sentence. Frowning, I gathered my thoughts for a moment before I continued. _Not quite my original direction, but in the immortal words of Darwin... 'Adaptation be wack, yo'._ "Their planet exploded due to natural processes," I agreed, mainly for the purposes of convenient newspaper lines. "Not something that appears likely with us. And even if there's a hundred other civilisations since fourty-five million years ago, they're all vulnerable if they're like Krypton and stick to one planet forever."

"But not if they're like ours," he said, eyebrows knitted. "Our species explores, exploits, colonises new lands- if we have space travel, we'll colonise the stars. So if there's an ancient species like ours, they'll have enough planets to avoid natural disasters like Krypton. And they'll keep exploring, becoming independent, sending out colonies of their own. Which," he added, gesturing with his pen, "brings us back to our original question..."

"...Where are they?" I finished.

"So science is predicting that- since Superman suggests an abundance of alien intelligences appear, and we've never found evidence of one that's still alive- some sort of large-scale disaster is going to befall us and wipe us out," Clark reasoned. Being interviewed by him was enjoyable- he was smart enough to make it feel like a conversation, rather than a lecture, as much as I enjoyed lecturing people. "That's- pretty important, if it's true." He took a second to scribble in his notebook some more. "So, it seems pretty obvious it's a problem when you put it that way. Why do you think world leaders are yet to take it into account?"

"Same reason as it's fallen upon LexCorp and other companies like us to replace fossil fuels," I said. "It's not likely to affect the people in charge. And there's one more reason."

"Oh?" he said, raising his pen slightly off the page.

"We have a Kryptonian," I said. "And they think he can save us." I paused ominously. "But Krypton had Kryptonians too... a whole planet full of them. And we only have one." ...Once again, I left a gap in my speech for the purposes of sounding... well, ominious. "...And on that wonderfully ominous note," I said, "is there anything else you'd like to ask?"

"Sure," he said jovially. "What's your favourite exhibit, and did you like the animatronic dinosaurs? We _are_ planning on having the museum on the front page, after all."

 _My favourite?_ "The giant water bugs!" I informed him happily. "They're really interesting, and there's an interesting fact about them I'm not supposed to know at my age or repeat in public. And the dinosaurs?" I waved my hand in a 'so-so' gesture. "Comme si, comme sa- they're impressive technologically, but I heard my father is planning on having them updated already to reflect the latest scientific knowledge. Nothing official, of course... Unofficially, I may have gone on a rant I'm sure my father would repeat if you brought up the problems with him."

"I'm guessing you don't think much of the designs. Any particular complaints?" asked Clark.

I giggled, before having to cut that off to maintain my professionalism. "Ahem- I'm sure my father would be happy to repeat them... As long as he can pretend it was him who described the words," I joked semi-seriously. "Now, I think I heard an ice cream truck stopping nearby, so I'll have to be going- I have an inordinate fondness for getting on my father's nerves by enjoying cheap junk." I nodded politely. "It was a pleasure talking to you, Mr Kent!"

"And you, Miss Luthor," he said cheerfully. "And thank you for the interview."

I waved him goodbye happily, and left. My rambling finally being over, I decided to make good on my word. _After_ all, I thought, _what could possibly go wrong with getting ice cream?_

 _...Damnit, I just thought The Phrase Which Should Forever Remain Unused._

I mentally slapped myself for that, even as I heard the voice of one Miss Lane starting to complain to her totally-not-boyfriend behind me. _Rule one of DC universe: Do not tempt Murphy, for Murphy is Law._

The best-case scenario would be me remaining paranoid for the rest of the day. The worst-case scenario was Zod careening down from the heavens to laugh evilly and make impolite requests for kneeling. And there was a whole lotta stuff in the middle, like the guy in the van secretly being a bug monster or something.

Alas, there was no way to tell. So I'd go get my ice cream and worry about it later.

Walking away from the museum, I headed for the road- there were a few people there already, including that reporter with the blue hat I liked so much. Being Not Lex Luthor, I stood in line, waiting patiently.

The museum had been perfectly fine, but that had been air-conditioned. And I'd got here by car (as I did most places, to be fair, but eh). Now that I was standing around in the baking sun, in a 'Lex Luthor suit for midgets', which he specifically wore when not expecting to be outside in the middle of a Metropolis summer... Well. Obvious flaws are obvious.

A pair of kids in front of me left with their ice creams, giving me a curious glance as they passed by. The man in the blue hat glanced their way as well- and his eyebrows raised. "Miss Luthor!" he said in that overpleased reporter way. "What a surprise! I'm Chezza, Salsesar Chezza, and-"

"Salsesar Chezza?" I repeated, blinking. _That's made up right? That name's got to be made up. Seriously._

"Right, right," he said, apparently not noticing my reaction. "So- I'm a reporter. I'll buy you ice cream if you answer a few questions for me. Good trade, am I right? Of course! So let's start asking."

"Bu-"

"First question, should be an easy one," Salsesar continued, regardless of my attempted interruption. "What's your opinion on the relationship between LexCorp and the rise of boy bands?"

I gaped incredulously. _Is this guy for real?_

"Not something you now much about?" He shrugged. "Next one then- girl scouts and crop circles. Your thoughts?"

"I don't-"

"-know about that one either. Unfortunate." The reporter steamrolled over me in a long trail of insanity that I knew could fill only the cookiest of magazine back pages. "What about the link between-"

"Will you _stop that!?"_ I said, finally raising my voice- and ignoring the twitch in my eye. "I am _Lena Luthor._ I can buy my _own_ ice cream."

He started to interrupt.

"And Mr Chezza? Your questions are really, _really_ dumb! If you think there's a grain of truth, then _you're_ dumb! And you're _holding up the line!"_

He had the audacity to look behind me. "You're the only other one in the line," he pointed out.

The guy driving the ice cream truck spoke up. "And you're holding her up," he growled. "Now stop harassing the poor kid and let her get her ice cream. So order yours and go away."

Salsesar looked at me. Then he looked at him. Finally, he raised his hands defensively. "Hey, it's not my fault she doesn't know about the latest big news story," he said indignantly. "I'm not having the same thing as someone so insufferable. You people are all morons anyway." The reporter turned his head. "Good day!"

As the hypocritical man stormed off, still wearing that hat on his undeserving head but blessedly lacking in sweet icy goodness, I turned to the ice cream seller. "Thank you," I said politely. "Some reporters don't know when to quit, unfortunately. Could I have one vanilla cone with as many toppings as you can provide, please?"

"Of course," he said. I watched greedily as he produced the ice cream and slowly started piling things on top- flakes, sprinkles, sherbet, strawberry sauce...

I was all too eager to throw my money at him, but unfortunately I had a reputation to maintain. "Thank you," I repeated as I stretched up to pass the money over, before taking a bite.

It tasted funny.

Suddenly I felt woozy. The ice cream fell from my grip, and I turned towards him, outraged. "What's the..." _meaning of this!?_ I'd been intending to say, but my voice was already slurring. I _had_ provoked Murphy! _Damnit!_

The ice cream salesman grinned- and it wasn't natural. I saw sharklike teeth in front of a set of mandibles. _Shark teeth,_ I noted. _Lobster mandibles. Which means the less visible parts are... rotifer and tardigrade._

"You did this to me," he said, the mandibles twitching as he spoke. "It's your fault- but I've got you now. And once I've got the cameras set up? Your pa's going to see me do it to you, too. It's gonna be a blast. And then the world will know the name... of _Vital._ "

I stumbled and fell. With the darkness encroaching, I thought one thing very hard:

 _Luthor, you son of a bitch, I told you not to steal my formula!_


	8. Chapter 8, Interlude- C Kent

Every time this happened, Clark was never quite sure if this would be the time someone figured it out.

He'd been talking with Lois when she'd gasped, at the same time his ears picked up a quiet 'thump'. And he'd turned around to see that little girl Lena being dragged into an ice cream truck of all things by... well, he didn't think the others could see it, but there was something not _right_ about that man.

A quick shout of "I'll call the police!" and dashing off in the museum, and he'd been given the precious moments he needed to stash his work clothes and reveal the costume beneath. Surely _someone_ would have figured out by now that Clark Kent disappeared every time Superman showed up?

Maybe they just thought Clark Kent a coward, who'd flee in terror from every situation that needed Superman in the first place. But Clark Kent knew otherwise, and that was enough for him. Like a speeding bullet, he shot out from one of the museum's windows, having to grin and bear the brief electrocution it gave him.

...Okay, maybe it had resulted in him going "Ow!" and taking his hands off the pane, but it was just a deterrent- and Clark was _never_ deterred when someone needed him.

So neither was Superman.

Changing his angle to make it look like he'd flown in from across the city, Clark charged the ice cream van. It was already on the road- he'd heard it starting up from inside the building. And its driver was driving like crazy. But he was on its trail, and no matter how pedal-to-the-metal it got, it certainly wasn't a machine that could outpace him.

He maneuvered, trying to match its speed even as it swerved violently to shake him off. Other cars swerved to avoid the mad driver, but he heard no sounds of crashes behind him- they'd be fine on their own. He swooped low, moving under the car- and in two hands, raised it onto his back.

Then he raised it up into the sky. "I don't know who you are," he said, loud enough to be heard through the muffling of the van atop him, "but I know I'm not letting you kidnap that girl."

He heard a deep booming laugh. The man replied- "Oh, I knew that already!" And then, one hand firmly gripping the side of the open window, he _jumped out_ of the van and swung around to meet Superman head-on.

Clark gasped as he was kicked in the face by a pair of studded boots. _Who in their right mind would jump out of a vehicle in midair to attack the guy holding it up!?_

But however crazy it was, it was working- the man grabbed him by the throat, grinning madly as he did _(and were those shark teeth?)_. Then he threw a punch in his face- and satisfied with the grunt of pain it produced, cackled as he did it again. "What's the matter, Superman?" he hooted. "Feeling a little weighed down!?"

Clark ran through his options as the fist repeatedly slammed into his face. If he tried to kick the man off, he could unbalance the van- and he'd have to catch him as he fell. And it'd rock the van, which he didn't want to do when there was a child inside. But heat vision could work- kept low-power, it would be painful enough to make him let go without doing any real damage. He knew what to do.

He swooped down low towards an empty-looking road, slowing down. Then he called up the heat behind his eyes- and released it in a quick blast. "Ouch!" the man shouted- "Damn you, that hurt!" But he didn't let go, and landed another blow.

"Language," Clark automatically chided. If that didn't work, he'd need to try again- _Less power, more time,_ he decided. He fired again- but was rewarded only with being hit harder, even as he was forced to stop by the way the target patch of skin seemed to be crisping up nicely rather than convincing him to let go.

The man pulled his hand back- but this time, didn't ball it into a fist. "If you're gonna keep doing that," he snarled, angry now, "I'm gonna have to take your heat vision away from ya!" He jabbed his fingers forwards towards his eyes.

Clark reacted instinctively- he let go of the van and thrust his arms out, throwing the man down onto the street. He felt the van start to slip- and stuck his legs out behind him, using them to balance it. It stayed stable- just. _And suddenly,_ he thought, _I wonder why I didn't just do this in the first place._

He slipped forwards as he approached the ground, grabbing the front of the ice cream truck as he gently placed it down. Then he turned to the man who must have stolen it, letting his cape flutter in the wind as he stared down disappointedly. "I'm not going to ask again," he warned sternly. "You can't beat me. _Surrender."_

The crazed man smiled. Now that he was on the ground, Clark could pick out what had made him so offputting. The way his throat bulged oddly, the slight mucousness of his skin. How his torso and abdomen seemed disproportionate to each other, the realisation that his feet were chitinous claws- that he hadn't been wearing studded shoes- and, most of all, the insanity in his eyes.

Superman just _knew_ this would only end with a beatdown.

The man spat something- and Clark dodged to the side. His expression remained flat as he briefly turned towards the wall it had hid, but he was suddenly a lot more concerned about the fight when he saw the concrete hissing and bubbling. Sure, explosions and bullets were something he could deal with. Fire, too. Electricity? Certainly painful, but not going to cause long-term damage.

Acid, however... It wasn't exactly something he'd been up against before. And he had no interest in finding out if chemicals could burn what heat couldn't.

The man spat again, and he thrust himself forwards, dodging under the projectile and throwing a fist at the man's gut. The man staggered backwards from the force, but clearly conventional punching strength was too little. "Is that all you can do!?" he shouted incredulously. "C'mon, I know you can do better than that!"

"Gladly." Superman let another punch hit him in the chest, setting him up to be in the perfect position as he obliged. He threw another one, stronger this time- proportionally, at least, since this time he was aiming for the face. The crazed man rolled back, spitting out a tooth shaped more like what he used to cut pizza than anything human.

The man vomited again- this time, though, he spat a whole volley. Clark dodged it with ease- and turning around, he saw nothing structural being eaten away by the hissing liquid. But when he looked back, there was something... different about the man- more skeletal. The muscles were still there, but more... defined, somehow.

 _Was he losing fluids?_ he questioned internally. _Is this putting him in danger?_

Another acid spit dodged. "Stand still!" the man cried angrily- his voice was hoarse, and now Clark could see the bones under his skin with his bare eyes. He had to put a stop to this, and fast.

With a cry, he charged forwards and slammed a fist into the man's chest. His target was flung back into a wall, cracking it- and Clark charged again with his own volley of follow-up strikes, ratcheting up the force until he felt bones creaking beneath each blow. Then he grabbed the man by the cuff of his stolen shirt and threw him- he hit a car, denting the metal and leaving him dazed into stillness.

He walked slowly towards him. "I think that's you down for the count," he said. "Come along quietly- you can sure try and keep causing trouble, but there's no point. You've been beaten."

Superman paused when he heard the man starting to chuckle. "Oh no, Superman," he said slowly. "You're missing a _Vital_ piece of information."

He could hear the capital letter. _Is that...Did he really choose something that bad?_ he questioned. _And why would anyone use a 'supervillain name' outside of Gotham?_ But regardless of Clark Kent's opinions, Superman was a hero- he couldn't voice his opinions right now.

Then he heard something crackle behind him, and his thoughts were interrupted.

"I knew I'd miss," the supervillain explained. "Which was why I was aiming at the building behind you."

Clark's eyes flicked from the ice cream van to the apartment building- the acid had eaten through to the wires behind the concrete, and had ignited. Soon the whole building would go with it. He had precious little time to spare before the apartment situation turned urgent.

He went for the truck. That situation was already urgent- he wasn't leaving the kid down here, even if he did suspect she was the same girl as the one in the rocket ship and the yellow cape a few weeks ago. He'd beaten this 'Vital' guy already- no need to do anything with him other than warn the police about acid.

He found himself blindsided when he was suddenly tackled from the side, leaving him flying into his target hard enough to leave a dent in the metal frame.

The man- Vital, if that was what he _really_ wanted to go by- was, somehow, already up. He grinned savagely- and Clark could see the tooth he'd knocked out, grown back already. The burn from his heat vision was gone, too. "You regenerate," he stated, frowning. But he heard movement from inside the van- it sounded like Lena was moving again. Good- she was independent enough to get out, as long as the supervillain was kept at bay.

"But I don't think the people in those buildings do~" 'Vital' singsonged, pointing up at the growing flames above. "Hurry up Superman! They're counting on you!"

He came to a decision- he grabbed the man by the throat, and flew him up to where the lowest acid had struck. "I think I will hurry up, then," he said- and slammed him into the space where the burning wires were exposed.

The man spasmed in his hands, and after a brief moment Superman let him drop. _He'll get better,_ he thought. The man hit the ground, and Superman heard a few wet cracking sounds the moment he did- but his heartbeat was still going strong and his breathing was fine, if pained. He went for the building.

He started with the outside. It was an electrical fire, water wouldn't help. Frowning, he looked down at the ground, and then through it- and found a suitable spot for what he was thinking of. It was just big enough, just enough ground that wasn't ran through with pipes or wires.

Spinning, he shattered the street- as limited as he could, of course, but the city could afford road repairs more than it could afford loss of life. The world slowed down around him as he grabbed the soil beneath, handful by handful, and threw it- to an outside observer it would look as if he was simply flinging outwards and upwards like a tornado.

Then something sharp landed on him from above. He had to fling _that_ in a different direction.

"Don't you know when to quit?" Clark demanded, levitating out of the hole- he'd delayed the fire, kept open the fire exits, but he wouldn't be done until the fires were out, the kid was safe and this guy was _down._

That was when he saw that Vital had tried to stab him with his _finger bones_ , which Clark could see were sticking out through the flesh of his fingers, sharp like claws. _I should really stop being surprised by now._ "You think you can stop me!?" he cried. "You'll have to kill me first! I'll never stop! _Never!"_ He laughed again.

The urge to facepalm was narrowly resisted. He was starting to get an idea of what this guy was like- clever, sure; tactical, somewhat. Crazy, definitely. But he certainly wasn't a good fighter. "This is getting ridiculous," said Clark. "You can't stop _me,_ either. Stand. Down."

The man laughed again, shaking his head- but Clark looked to the side at a growing noise. The supervillain looked that way too, and his eyes widened.

Then a somewhat classy blue car driven by a man with no face hit the mutated man with a wet crunch. Superman swore the guy was giving him a thumbs up before the airbag smothered him and he launched himself forwards to help.


	9. Chapter 9

I groaned, clambering out of the window. _That wasn't fun._

Being unable to ascertain exactly what had knocked me out, the vast reserves of ice cream and sugar held within this van were off-limits. The ice lollies, meanwhile, were all in sealed packets, which gave me a source of sugar I could get at right now. I'd dropped an orange one out of the window, which I was currently following out, and left a random amount of money on the counter instead. (Counting would be easy. Being bothered was hard.)

In the time I'd spent going from thoroughly zonked to somewhat awake, I'd heard an awful lot of screeching metal. Looking outside as I semi-flopped to the floor confirmed to me what I'd suspected- the Question's car had now become a handy restraining device for our somewhat untrained supervillain we had here today. The guy was currently thoroughly unconscious, drooling, and healing a rather severe case of concave abdomen. _And I'm glad I didn't see it before he started healing..._

The faceless hero himself was staring at the downed man, trying to... I dunno, figure out how the guy linked to people who fold socks and the French revolution. Conspiracy theorist stuff.

Superman was helping with the apartment- the fire had been put out by him and the fire brigade a little while ago, but that didn't mean he couldn't go around sticking black-and-yellow tape on anything unsafe or whatever he was doing. He'd usually be off by now, but he'd been waiting for me- or, at least, for me to talk to the Question- and my prioritisation of ice lollies had presumably put him at ease in regards to my physical health.

I took the wrapper off, stuffing it in my pocket as I did. "I heard you two talking," I said. "Trying to figure out his origins or something?"

The Question... err, remained a faceless person who generally lacked such describable things as facial expressions. "Not even a thank you for our assistance?" he asked.

My brows knitted in irritation. "We are _having a conversation!"_ I said. "My plan was to thank you afterwards!" Was it just me, or did people not understand the concept of finishing things and _then_ thanking people?

...Well, from how I kept on managing to do it, it was probably just me. "Of course," he replied questioningly.

I started eating, somewhat mollified by the words, even if the delivery was sarcastic as hell.

"So," he said, leading me over. "Now you have a moment to examine him properly, the question is... do you recognise who this is?"

I gave the unconscious supervillain a hard stare, taking in as many details as I could... Nope. "Not as far as I remember," I replied with a shrug, turning away.

He gave me another that's-probably-supposed-to-be-a-Look.

I frowned, increasingly feeling how my father must feel whenever he talked to people about... things that annoyed him, I guess. "What?"

"As far as you remember," he repeated dubiously.

I nodded, one eyebrow quirked.

He turned to face the LexCorp Headquarters building, staring up at its towering figure in the distance. "By all indications, your father has a photographic memory," he said. "And I sincerely doubt he would make your genes any less effective than his own."

I rolled my eyes. _"Really?"_ I said. "Photographic memory is an _urban legend."_

"Until four months ago, when it was scientifically verified in a paper by the University of Fawcett City." The Question turned to look at me. Or in my general direction, at least. "No doubt in order to boost the legitimacy of human geniuses in the face of alien competition. I suspect- for a variety of reasons- that the only reason you lack a photographic memory is because you don't expect one."

I raised a finger and opened my mouth to retort. Then I stopped. "Excuse me for a second. I need to try and remember a few things."

 _If this works..._

I took a breath. "Companionship plus understanding, plus assurance, plus joy, plus altruism divided by respect which is divided by commendation and in turn divided by sympathy and then multiplied by innocence, dignity, success and acceptance where y equals n- where y equals despair and n equals caution, love equals truth, death equals rebirth, and self equals light side."

The Question tilted his head.

After glancing back briefly to confirm that I hadn't accidentally a mass mind control, I continued regardless of his confusion. "Loneliness plus alienation, plus fear, plus despair, plus self-worth divided by mockery which is divided by condemnation and in turn divided by misunderstanding, multiplied by guilt, shame, failure and judgment- when n equals y where y equals hope and n equals folly, love equals lies, life equals death and self equals dark side."

"And the question is, what's that supposed to mean?" asked the Question.

"Wait a second, one more," I said, with growing anxiety. "Three times two, open brackets- nine Y Z- close brackets, four A... Ah shit."

"I'm assuming it's bad if you're breaking your perfect public image," the faceless man drawled.

"...There are- there's _very good reasons_ people can forget things," I said. "I'd recommend you forget what I just said, Mr Question, because I preferred thinking I'd forgotten them as well." _And by Question I mean Vic Sage but Superman can hear us and I'd rather not draw attention to things that I couldn't arrive at, theoretically, by pure calculation._

"Why?" he challenged- sternly, not menacingly. "Why do you think we're better off not knowing?"

"Because," I explained, "giving me the equations is something like giving Schindler the plans for a nuclear weapon. He's not gonna use it- he doesn't even have the knowledge to use it without a whole lot of work he doesn't need to do. But if someone tells Hitler..."

"Godwin's Law?" the Question asked flatly. "Is that really necessary?"

"I'm a lot less of a saint than Schindler," I told him, finally giving up my ominous stare into the distance. He was a lot better at it than I was anyway. "And the relationship between Hitler and who I'm thinking of is an exponential one."

Sure, I was defenseless against Darkseid. But thanks to _someone,_ if he _ever_ figured it out- which, by rule of drama, was inevitable-

Then I needed to amp up my game. And if what I suspected- no, what I remembered- of Kryptonian physiology was true... The best way to do that was to get together the samples I needed and start playing 'amp it up' literally.

People say Kryptonians are perfect.

'People' aren't a quite frankly ready-to-hyperventilate little girl with whole lot of brain power and a deadline for being able to punch out the personification of evil.

Which was when I realised I had to clamp down on that hyperventilation before the Man of Steel heard me.

As if on cue, I felt a gust of air behind me. "I heard your heart racing," said Superman. "Everything okay down here?"

For a moment I was flabbergasted. _Did he not..._ And then a bit of that anxiety faded as I realised that Superman hadn't heard our conversation after all. He'd been helping in the fires and post-fire cleanup- he'd been listening for _injured people,_ not conversation. And if someone couldn't speak for some reason- maybe they were trapped under rubble and couldn't breathe, maybe they were mute or in shock, something like that- then listening for a particularly frantic heartbeat would be a great way to find people in danger.

"I'm fine," I said a little too urgently.

"The shock's getting to her," said the Question.

I flushed the images of Apokolips from my mind. "I'm _fine_ ," I repeated. "I can still help with the investigation, just- can you go over what you've found so far, Question? Please?"

He looked at me, concerned (probably, considering no face)- then nodded. "Of course," he agreed in what was probably supposed to be a comforting tone of voice. "The aggressor," he said, turning to the villain, "seems to be one Kyle Volkner- the security specialist and electrical engineer hired by Luthor to guard his museum."

"That would make sense," said Superman, cupping his chin in thought. "When I was fighting him, he wasn't skilled- just persistent. And that's as good an explanation as any for how he was able to ignite all these fires in the first place."

"He didn't just have fire breath or something?" I clarified.

"Acid spit," the Question informed me. "He specifically aimed them to cause electrical fires when shooting at the building- not something a man could do without the prerequisite knowledge, at least... not to _this_ degree of effectiveness. It's why they set up the temporary quarantine."

"...We're in a quarantine?" _That... actually makes sense now I think about it._ "..That explains why my father isn't here... Or the reporters."

Superman nodded. "The biological tests are almost done, from what I can hear," he told us. "Not much time to talk."

"Then we need to finish talking quickly. And the most important question we're able to ask here, would be-" The Question turned to me. "What, _precisely,_ happened to him?"

I could answer that with my eyes closed. "Luthor did," I informed them. "With a modification from my own formula I've been working on." Kneeling down- and then promptly standing up again when I realised I was the right height already- I started pointing out features. "Resistance to drying out his own tissues- tardigrade. Teeth and mandibles- shark and lobster. The ability to take in that DNA in the first place- rotifer. But my formula doesn't work like this."

I took out my phone. _Let's upload visual files... version fourteen through seventeen... and there we go._ I lifted up the images of the rats and showed it to them.

"My formula doesn't cause mutations, even if I do only test it on unconscious subjects. But it's the same base." I pointed at the skeletal features of the rats, then at Vital's own skeletal appearance. "Mister Volkner here seems to have withstood the process by actively taking in water to stabilise himself- and by having a formula that features other DNA much more strongly, at the cost of his sensibilities."

"The formula drove him mad." Superman's face darkened.

"Yes. We've got the original DNA amplified- a shark-like blood frenzy, maybe damage from an arthropod nervous system taking over the original vertebrate one- but there's also extra. African clawed frog," I said, gesturing to the claws that had burst from inside the flesh of his fingers. "Fulmar bird, modified with hyena or vulture DNA, to produce acidic projectiles. Axolotl, for the regenerative abilities. That's, what-" I counted it up in my head. "-eight different DNA donors? And that's only what's visible- one of them's only there because I know it's there. There could be even more."

"Must be terrible, being like that," the Question said, looking down at Vital with pity. "So... _why_ do you think he did this to him? A few illegally-obtained files of mine suggest Volkner _volunteered_ for the process- why would Luthor betray him?"

"His security system failed," I said. "And Luthor couldn't stand letting him go unpunished. Either that, or..."

I realised something.

"...It wasn't intentional."

"You've changed your mind?" asked Superman. "Why? What makes you think that?"

"The only result so far from my experiments is a painful death... or it would be," I amended, "if not for the whole sedatives thing I use. Luthor expected it to kill him, or he expected it to work as intended- to keep him alive and healthy. Because he _told_ Mister Volkner it was _mine._ "

"As much of an egomaniac as my investigations suggest Luthor is," the Question continued on from my initial statement, "he wouldn't willingly put his daughter in danger. So he tried to make a super-soldier out of her research. And the question is... why the sudden urgency?"

"I'm guessing you know the answer," said Superman.

The Question looked at me. I shrugged, and he audibly sighed... for some reason. "Because," he explained, "It would prove to Lena that her formula _worked._ And he needs it soon, because in a week's time... He needs to get a present for the girl who has everything."

At my confused look, he continued.

"It's your _birthday,_ " he said flatly.

For a moment, I stared blankly... Then, slowly, I introduced my palm to my face. I groaned, and realised, flicking back through my memories to experiment twelve, when Mercy had told me about the social event-

" _That's_ what I was forgetting!" I said.


	10. Chapter 10

I waved goodbye to Superman and the Question with exaggerated cheer, as Mercy led me back to the car. (Supes didn't have to know my plans to steal his DNA from his beard.)

Beyond the crowd of reporters that had parted like the Red Sea before Lex Luthor's favourite bodyguard, I entered the car. The difference in temperature was telling- as was the difference in atmosphere. Outside it was stifling. Within the confines of my father's limousine, though, it was _frosty_.

"Lena," said Lex, not turning to look at me from the seat beside me as the car accelerated away from the scene. "You shouldn't be associating with vigilantes."

"Mr Volkner- at least, I _assume_ he's Mr Volker?-" I paused to say, a level of accusation in my voice- "-intended to utilise a dangerously unstable serum on me. The same one that mutated _him."_ He didn't respond beyond slight changes in facial expression. I frowned, trying to make him look at me back. "You could at least be _somewhat_ grateful to them for, if not saving me, then at least making it _considerably_ more convenient for us all."

"When you say 'a dangerously unstable serum'," my father growled, "you mean _your_ serum."

I gave him a flat look. "No," I said succinctly. "I'm guessing it was seabird, scavenger and clawed frog DNA you added, plus boosters to the lobster and shark, to be specific on why."

"We _tried_ your original version," he said, returning to that calm, almost-sarcastic tone of voice I so rarely heard... directed at me, anyway. "The DNA fragments were _far_ too fragile to remain embedded- it was only when _I_ amplified them did they even _start_ to remain stable." He looked at me, ice in his eyes, and by reflex alone I leaned away. "You've had _long enough._ Even with the contributions I made, your project is _worthless._ A _failure_."

I opened my mouth to retort. Then I took a breath and tried again.

"Your research has been sent to the archives in the unlikely scenario of it becoming useful in the future," he informed me. "Now, what are you going to do to make up for your failure?"

I glared at him, and prepared my answer. Instead, I hiccuped and wiped my face, which all things considered was not exactly a satisfying answer for either of us.

 _This is the second time in two months that this has happened,_ I berated myself. _When Braniac comes for a visit, I am stealing the hell out of his archives, for the sole purpose of identifying that can set those stupid ducts to manual._

His voice came from that direction I was distinctly trying not to look in, while I tried to get back into my standard, generally-capable-of-speech state. "You should be focusing on the task at hand, Lena! You should be _planning!_ Not whimpering," he scolded, "like a lost pup!"

This was, as you can imagine, distinctly unhelpful for my biological state of emotion regardless of whether my conscious mind considered it of any relevance. I made some generic gestures of 'please wait, speech box is currently down for maintenance' in his general direction while I attempted to plan what I could do.

In this case, the main problem was thinking of something that involved neither genetic engineering nor accidentally acting as the five-year-old adviser on behalf of Lex's Evil Overlord List. Whilst sniffling, which is (as you may have gathered) a major pet peeve as long as I'm the one doing it. Very bad for focus and whatnot.

I considered rolling down the window- fresh air is good for mental state and whatnot- but, alas, neither is an angry multi-billionaire telling you to get your head back inside before the reporters notice.

"Okay, I-" I stopped and coughed for a second, since teenage sighs of irritation got old eventually and I had to mix things up at some point. "If the tardigrade DNA d-doesn't work, then-" I sniffled again. _Stop interrupting me, interacting non-sentient biological systems, you're stupider than I am._ "Then-"

"No genetic engineering," Lex decreed. "You're _awful_ at it."

At that moment, Mercy interrupted from the front of the car. "Lex," she said, "she's just a kid-"

"And _I_ was 'just a kid' when I first opened that hole-in-the-wall repair shop," Lex snarled, the facade breaking for a brief moment. "She has resources from across LexCorp- if she can't manage even _one_ success, then _she is a failure._ "

Mercy went mercifully silent. Being banned wouldn't stop me anyway. It wouldn't take that long to get a gengineering setup in my secret base- and with a minimal number of unplanned accesses to Star Labs and old peoples' homes (well, a particular old person's home), I'd be able to find at least one alternative to simply mixing DNA, making a few interpretations and adjustments, and repeatedly hoping it worked.

"So." Lex's tone returned to that calm, steely tone. "What will you be working on, Lena?"

 _Umm._

 _Err._

Hiccup.

"...Ps-psionics?" I ventured.

"Go on."

"Th-there's a school for-" I hiccupped again. _Oh come on,_ I thought as I continued, _really?_ "-for psychics. At the Center f-for Paranormal studies," I specified. "I-it keeps files on psychic abilities, which could be u-used as a base for a research pro-" Hiccup. "-project. MRI scans, g-growth progression, things like that."

"Hmm." Lex considered it for a moment. "And you're confident you can obtain these files?"

I nodded, trying and failing to avoid another hiccup in the process.

"Acceptable. Now all you need to do is ensure this project is _actually successful._ I'm expecting you to move to testing soon, but research will begin as soon as you're through the door." He paused, and I got the impression this was more for Mercy than me- "No interruptions." The car slowed to a halt, and I had a sudden realisation that we had, in fact, been taking the scenic route back home up until I could actually provide an answer. _Now that's just petty,_ I thought.

Most of this was, in fact. But when you're a small child and the opposing party is the most influential man in the world, shutting up, dealing with it and later finding a way to completely ignore it was really the only option.

I attempted to be the first one out, for purposes of being in front. Unfortunately, the car _finally_ had the child-locks on- meaning that this time, my never-ending battle to get out of the car before Mercy did was in vain. More fortunately, we apparently had some extra bodyguards (who were already at the entrance) to keep the reporters off our backs this time. I nevertheless made sure I looked extra-glarey as we returned to the building.

I followed the others on autopilot as I considered what I actually knew about psionics. By all indications, it wasn't necessarily metahuman in nature. There was that Doctor Destiny guy, after all-

The elevator... closed in my face, and I walked into it, hitting my nose on the door. _Ow,_ I succinctly thought.

My frustration, fueled secondarily with the mild shock of walking into something, immediately attempted to launch a rebellion to free the sniffling and general other displays of sadness that were entirely inappropriate for my internal emotional state. It unfortunately enjoyed huge success in its campaign against conscious thoughts everywhere as I had to go and call an elevator of my own instead, leaving me basically as upset-looking as before I'd provided a decent answer.

 _But,_ I thought as the door opened, _I have things to think about other than facial expressions and whatnot._

 _The Materioptikon won't be invented for another few years at the very least,_ I considered as the elevator travelled up to my room-slash-lab, thinking back to the psychotic dream-murderer fellow. _But it does prove it's possible to develop psychic powers without any base metahuman genes._ The elevator opened again with a pleasant chime, and I stepped through into my workspace.

Which had been stripped bare apart from the computer and some spare parts. _Typical._

After one last wipe of my face and a moment to blow my nose, I sat down at the computer and started getting down to work. This was proto-Cadmus I was dealing with, here- they might not have the full funding while Superman wasn't an obvious threat to the government, but I doubted how much their morality would get in the way of shutting me up if they noticed me snooping around.

I started by sneaking in through lower-level operatives- exploiting a few emails between the headmaster of the Paranormal Centre and some lackeys here, a giggle at how badly people secured their passwords there, and I had basic access. That was when I hit my first wall.

From here, I could download files from the research institute- a pretty good array of neural scans, hypotheses, practice methods and genetic markers, for the most part. Volcana had already escaped- _Good for her,_ I thought, though I doubted I'd be in a position to recruit her any time soon.

The problem was that- at this point in time, anyway- proto-Cadmus seemed to be organised into cells rather than a single, unified superstructure. Sure, I _could_ hack the CIA to get to their command structure, but it sounded more reasonable to find a way that _wasn't_ incredibly stupid and an even more blatant breach of national security. So I was effectively stranded on an island in the network, unless one of the higher-ups- who were a lot less lenient in leaving important emails lying around- got in touch with another cell.

Not hacking the CIA didn't imply that anything I was doing was _sensible,_ of course. But lines had to be made somewhere.

Temporarily stumped by the security measures outside of the Firestorm cell, I settled for leaving a few viruses scattered around. They'd log things of interest- passwords, reports, unexpected network connections, things like that- and I could check up on them when I got back. It appeared my entry methods were quite secure, so I was confident I'd be able to.

With the lines set, I left my metaphorical fishing rods to go fish and started poring through all the other peoples' intellectual property I'd mysteriously stumbled upon.

The gist of it seemed to be somewhat similar to the Speed Force, in that it seemed to require creating a model of an object in a human frame of reference. Unlike the Speed Force, though, psionics was less mental and more neurological. Brain cells, by chance or metagenome influence, created consistent shapes- conduits to the Ethereal Plane, for lack of a better way to refer to its origin.

(I could use 'Psi Force'. But really, that was reserved for something sufficiently XCOM to deserve it.)

Which suggested that an external influence- such as an electromagnetic field- could prompt an otherwise normal brain to develop these 'psi structures', activating a previously-absent psychic ability.

Comparing it to the Materioptikon, the hypothesis seemed to be a good one- it fit well with the evidence. An ionised gas cloud and electrical arcs contributed to the suggestion of it being performed via electromagnetism, while the actual function of the device fit with it effectively brute-forcing a neural pattern. Low exposure was weak and temporary- like seeing something for a brief second and being asked to draw it five minutes later- but long-term exposure both strengthened and ingrained the power- like drawing a picture of your family.

All I'd need to do now would be to extrapolate the required magnetic fields to produce the necessary patterns. My only issue was that there was no apparent way to provoke a specific power- explaining why the government kept an eye out for useful psychics and training them rather than just making their own.

Hopefully I'd get something more useful than 'turn people insane via eye contact' if it ever reached a point of usability for myself. But that was still a ways off. For now, I had my research and lacked a way to apply it- I requisitioned the necessary items for a high-fidelity magnetism doodah, which would inevitably let my father know I'd finished my research, and moved onto more productive things. Creating some sufficiently stealthy robot probes, for one- there were still enough spare parts laying around to mess with. Once that was done, it'd be late enough to be worth sneaking off to the secret lair and taking the bike to Gotham.

After all, I'm sure the Bat Family was less than pleased about me getting temporarily kidnapped by a supervillain...

Which reminded me. I still hadn't confirmed if my father had been planning to get me a completed project for my birthday. _Ah well,_ I decided as I took a break to wash my face, _I guess the Question will have to figure that one out himself._


	11. Chapter 11

As its magnetic fields worked on the air around it, the Dynacycle deccelerated as it swooped down through one of the Batcave's entrances. Negatively accelerated, if you're being pedantic, but that's Brainiac-level pedantry.

(I assume. I don't actually know if Brainiac is pedantic.)

The flight had been a lot smoother today- I'd taken the time to practice my fine magnetic fields on its engine earlier. If I wanted the psionics thing to at least resemble 'going right', practice would be a good idea- so I'd been practicing. A lot. As helpful as it was when combined with copious quantities of anesthetics, animal testing would be unfortunately difficult due to the threat of accidentally creating a reality-warping rodent of doom or something equally ridiculous. That had left me on the backup plan- using cloned brain tissue- but that would still limit the amount of work I could do before human testing (i.e _personal_ testing) became necessary.

The tunnels under Wayne Manor were more extensive than you'd might expect at first. But the Batcave was a big space, and the long tunnels ensured that the cavern was deep enough to keep it concealed from prying eyes. It didn't matter all that much for me anyway- the bike nimbly cut the corners of the neon-lit subterranean road with the agility of a sparrowhawk and the speed of a... probably also a sparrowhawk, actually, since we weren't really going fast enough while I was indoors to compare it to a peregrine.

The brief transit ended as I startled the local volant mammals and the bike made some adjustments- I let the warnings of unexpected changes in its designated parking space pass me by. As I stepped out, I noted that the painted markers for my location had been replaced by a small and slightly raised platform. _Neat._ And it confirmed my visits were expected, too, at least in the long term.

I flipped out of the bike in the way Robin had been showing me, not quite getting the right angle of rotation- I ended up facing the front of my bike, rather than away from it altogether- but landing on my feet nevertheless. I smiled to myself- it was a work in progress, but I was getting better at it.

As I realigned myself to face the correct direction, I found my vision blocked by a large, pitch-black cowl.

He stayed still for a moment before he spoke. "You'll need more work before your acrobatics meets the standards of your footwork," he said. "You should work with Robin on your grip positions."

I nodded, taking his feedback into account and being somewhat pleased that it lined up with my own analysis. "I've been needing someone to say something like that today," I semi-grumbled as I followed on behind him.

"Like what?" asked Batman, not looking back as he brought me over to the Bat Computer. I took a glance at the screens- it was performing a rather slow analysis on some sort of wood fragment. Explains why he's available for greeting me at the door.

"Y'know," I said, shrugging as I sat down. "Something actually positive." Batman took a position to observe my work, just behind the chair.

"That's a funny thing to call positive." That was when I realised the Boy Wonder was also in here, making me jump slightly as I found him standing behind me in addition to Batman himself. I waved at him nevertheless, getting a wave back in return. "We saw you on the news," said Robin. "Apparently Metropolis is getting its own supervillain problems? You alright?"

"Oh, that got sorted out pretty easy," I explained. "Superman and that Question guy were both pretty on top of things. Nah, it's my father I've been complaining about."

"You got kidnapped by a supervillain..." Robin said, frowning, "and it's your _dad_ you're complaining about?"

I gestured vaguely. "Supervillains aren't that big a problem when you're in a city with the world's most helpful flying brick," I explained. "Besides, I wasn't even conscious for most of it- it pretty much went from ice cream to figuring out where the guy came from. My father, on the other hand, _specifically_ lengthened the trip so he could complain at me for something that was entirely _his_ fault."

"What was he saying?" asked Batman. "I assume it's related to whatever security breach let that man access the genetic formula you've been working on."

"Security breach?" I said, almost incredulously. "Oh, it wasn't a _security breach-_ he added genes to it, _amplified_ it, went _straight_ to testing it on the guy who'd messed up designing the security in his museum, tore out my lab because _his_ serum mutated the guy and drove him nuts, and now my voice is cracking while I'm trying to rant about things." I huffed. "Always interrupts my rants..."

"Lex Luthor caused that mutation?" said Batman. "What was he intending to do with it?"

"The running theory's that he planned to either get Mr Volkner killed, or that he wanted to prove me right as a birthday present," I said. "So yeah, he tore out my lab, sealed my research- not that the seal's going to keep me out of it, mind- threw enough insults to get _Mercy_ of all people to question him, banned me from doing any more genetics, and made me pick another project. Just to add insult to injury."

"He created a supervillain as a _birthday present?"_ asked Robin, incredulously. "Wow, he must really suck at parenting. Couldn't he have just got you a pony?"

"He does. And the idea of a pony _is_ appealing," I admitted, as I opened up the tutorial Batman had arranged on the computer... _Spanish lessons? Huh._ "But Metropolis isn't exactly a good place for animals- and besides, I'd end up making a unicorn first anyway if I _really_ wanted a horse."

"It being a part of your birthday is a reasonable- if untested- hypothesis as to what he planned to do if he succeeded," Batman said. "But now you've confirmed he caused the mutation... I noticed a few other details that didn't add up, back when I was doing my own investigation on the matter. I don't think Lex was planning on it being a success in the first place."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why would he be counting on it failing?"

"Because he was expecting it to," Robin figured. "Duh."

 _...Well,_ I thought, _that's technically correct._ "...Y'know," I drawled, "I really should have expected that answer. Especially since we're talking about modifications on a project that wasn't even finished in the first place. But why do it _now?_ Why not wait until it _is_ finished?"

In leiu of an answer, Batman carefully pushed my chair aside- I shuffled it over a bit to assist him, though a six-year-old assisting The Goddamn Batman in any physical task is largely an insignificant factor. He brought up a map of the city, and layered a colour code atop it.  
"I was looking into the waste disposal network as a location where Vital could have obtained the formula," he explained. "The green buildings are where biological waste is disposed of. The red one is where the apartment fire was. The central one is the LexCorp tower. Notice anything odd?"

I frowned, looking at it... "Not really," I admitted.

"The waste disposal's not that near to the tower," pointed out Robin. "That's where they would have disposed of your lab stuff. But the building fire was pretty close by- he'd have to have been going in circles to make the trip last long enough to throw all your stuff out first."

"And the news reports confirm that he wasn't," agreed Batman. "He'd discarded the lab equipment in advance." I looked up at him in confusion. "There were no signs of a breakout from LexCorp itself, either. This wasn't Vital's plan. It didn't make sense the first time I looked at it- I thought it was an inside man, or a backdoor, perhaps. But it wasn't."

Batman's face went stony.

 _"Luthor_ planned the attack," he said.

...

 _...What._

"I was the _target_ of that attack!" I retorted. "Why would-"

 _Hang on, wait._

"...He had about three extra security guards hanging around," I complained, burying my face in my hands. _"Three._ How arrogant _is_ he!?"

"I tracked his transactions," Batman said. "There were more than just extra bodyguards... He'd hired an assassin as well."

A picture appeared on the screen. "Deadshot," Robin said, whistling. "The guy's big money. But why even set up the attack in the first place...?"

"I'm guessing- 'Oh, look at me,'" I mimicked, pinning my fringe to the top of my head with my hands. "'My name is Lex Luthor and everyone hates me, look at this poor little girl being targeted.' Sniffle, sniffle. 'You should let me do what I want because I'm so, so persecuted by these people that totally aren't my fault.' Wink wink, nudge nudge."

I received an odd look from Robin. I replied with the omnicommunicative semi-shrug of _I'm six, I can get away with it, don't judge._

Batman answered Robin's question properly after waiting for us both to be listening again. "Two reasons," he started to explain. "The first- he couldn't test the formula on humans without military approval, and he couldn't get military approval without testing it."

Robin frowned. "Sounds tricky to deal with. But if you can find a way to make the formula without getting arrested for it, you can just set up a fight and record it to show the investors later." He tilted his head. "And if your mystery formula was supposedly made by a little girl, and the test drove the subject insane enough to believe you when you say that... Who _can_ you hold responsible for it?"

"Nobody," confirmed Batman. "Especially not Luthor. Which brings us to the second point- whatever Vital does, Luthor can't be blamed for it."

I piped up with the obvious. "He could try and use Vital to kill Superman?" I asked. It seemed laughable, but... _How much do people know about Superman at this point in time, really?_

"It's unlikely to be a coincidence that Vital seemed specialised to attack with acid," Batman confirmed. "The Superman has already proven immune to blunt force, armour-piercing projectiles, being buried under a large amount of weight and most other forms of conventional weapon. If he hates Superman as much as you say he does, he'd start looking for alternatives. Chemical weapons could be viable- but he can't manufacture a conventional weapon to use them, or someone would notice- it would leave too much of a trail to follow."

"So he makes an acid-spitting supervillain to manufacture it for him," I realised. "In-house, no exotic materials, no questions asked. Wonderful." Then I realised something. "But... I rewatched the fight on the news, and I saw Superman in person afterwards. He never actually _hit_ Superman with any acid, did he?"

"...He's going to try again," Batman realised, going still and looking up towards the screen. With a flick of the mouse he cancelled the analysis on the wood fragments, then turned to me- "I'm going to need the chair."

I nodded with an understanding look, and moved. One does not simply deprive Batman of chair, regardless of how pissed off one is at certain bald idiots.

"What do you think he's thought of?" questioned Robin, as we walked off. "He usually limits himself to just Gotham."

"I don't know," I replied honestly. "Maybe he thinks Luthor's gonna hire someone from Gotham. Convince Joker to give Superman an acid spray to the face or something?"

Tim shivered. "I hope not," he replied. "...You okay? You seemed pretty angry at your dad."

"It's just put me in a bit of a mood again," I replied. "Entirely at him. I'll get over it. Again. For the second time today." With a frown, I paused. "In completely unrelated news... I assume Batman would get mad if we broke into the STAR Labs for entirely selfish reasons?"

"...Err, I don't think I need to answer that," replied Robin. I could almost imagine a cartoonish sweatdrop running down his face, and I was pleased. Sort of. (Being pleased is difficult when you're still pissed off.)

"Want to go visit a lonely old man to ask him about his field of work instead, then?" I questioned.

Robin stared blankly for a second. "Sure," he finally said, shrugging. "Why not? ...I'm going to regret this later, aren't I?"

"Oh, positively," I agreed. "But only because you invoked Murphy."

We walked in a pair as Batman scoured the Bat Computer's data feeds for clues in the background. The Dynacycle had received a few upgrades, recently- most notably the fact I'd added a second, larger seat in the background in case I needed to ferry a non-child around or something. Robin, being physically older than me, took that seat- I claimed my rightful place in the front.

Surprisingly, no questions were asked about the safety of a vehicles designed and created solely by a small child as we took off. "It's that entrance today," he said instead, pointing.

"Thanks," I replied, following his instructions. There were a couple of exits, and Batman preferred to rotate them- soon we were out under the open sky. I checked the front mirror- yeah, Robin wasn't quite tall enough to see over my seat. Sucks to be him, I guess.

"So, this guy we're visiting," asked Robin. "Who is he? Bad guy?"

"Nah," I replied. "At least, I don't think so. He's a nanotechnologist- my father says he's one of his best employees." I shrugged. "I'm not sure exactly what standards he's meeting, but I did some research and I think he's working on replicating observed effects via nanotech. Professor Ivo, he's called."

"Nanotech?" questioned Robin, as we left the borders of Gotham City. The gothic skyline towered behind us. "Doesn't seem all that related to genetic engineering. What do you think it can help you with?"

"Well, the problem I've been having so far is finding a way to implement things," I said. "So I'm looking for something that can mimic another organism's abilities- I heard there was some sort of chemical compound in STAR Labs that could do that, but if Professor Ivo's actively researching it..."

"...Then he'll be able to help you understand how to do it too," Robin realised. "Clever."

"As long as he actually wants to help, anyway," I added.

Robin leaned to watch as Metropolis appeared before us. We were headed to the other side of it, just on the outskirts- the mansion didn't take too long to come into view.

 _It's... a rather nice place, actually,_ I thought as we came into the final approach. It was a big, multi-layered building nestled into a small cluster of hills, with the entrance reminiscent of those old Greco-Roman temples. The walls were a soothing grey colour, neither too bright nor too dull, and a brook burbled in front of the well-cared-for trees that surrounded the place.

I checked the time- only nine o'clock or so, still a decent enough time of night to knock on a door. I'd specifically gone to the Batcave a little earlier than normal today- it wasn't like anyone in LexCorp was attentive enough to know I wasn't there.

We landed carefully (or rather, the bike did it for us)- I was first to hop out, since it took a little longer for Robin's section to open up enough to do so. I looked around for any security systems, just to avoid giving the poor guy a heart attack... at least, giving him one a few years earlier than canon, anyway. Robin saw me checking- "It's fine," he confirmed. "Go ahead."

I nodded gratefully, and went for the doorbell. It chimed pleasantly, and we both- _wait, no, scratch that, just me,_ I thought, turning around to see that Robin had pulled the classic Batman 'disappear while you're not paying attention' schtick.

It took a few seconds before the door opened.

I almost flinched at the sight of the thing standing before me.

"...You are not Professor," said a towering (and utterly perplexed) colossus of silver, which I had most certainly not been expecting.

It wasn't completed, obviously. Its joints were robotic, and its skin was covered in the tiny scratches of day-to-day living. But one look at its eyes could tell you instantly what this thing was.

Two red specks, hovering in a black background. Professor Ivo's android.

Amazo.


	12. Chapter 12

"Who are you?" asked Amazo, looking down upon me.

The guy was... tall. What, could Ivo not reach the tall shelves? Fortunately, the android seemed to be a pretty cool dude in this continuity. I waved politely. "Hi," I said, deciding honesty was best- "I'm Framework, and I'm having trouble with some science stuff. Is Profesor Ivo in? I was wondering if he'd be willing to help."

"He is not here," said Amazo. "He is late. Please wait here." The robot turned around and walked back into the house, leaving the door wide open behind him.

Robin dropped down from... wherever he'd been to land beside me. "A _giant robot?"_ he asked. "I thought you said he did nanotech. _That_ thing doesn't look very 'nano' to me."

"He _does_ work on nanotech," I replied, scratching my head... "I guess he's just one of those genius types- makes sense considering how much Luthor likes him. Though honestly I'm just as surprised as you are." Taking a moment to peer in, I was surprised by just how much machinery was in the front entrance- and by the faint sound of something that sounded like television. Not static or anything- the sound of a program, which clicked off just as I was about to figure out what it was.

The robot reemerged from the house after a second. He looked at us both. "Would you like a cup of tea?" he asked me.

"Do you have any mint tea?" I asked. _Mint tea best tea._

The android nodded. "Cetainly," he agreed, "it shouldn't be hard to fetch. And you?" he asked Robin, seemingly unperturbed by the fact the Boy Wonder had seemingly appeared from nowhere while he wasn't looking.

"Uhh... sure," Robin agreed hesitantly, looking like his fight-or-flight reflexes had hit a ten-foot steel wall. _Oh, Robin. You may be the comedy for Batman, but you're a mere straight man for the shenanigans of Framework. Muahahahahahah._

"Come in," said Amazo, leading us past the science machines to a small side room- probably the living room, though it didn't exactly seem lived in, beyond those rather comfortable-looking sofas it contained. There was a small computer in one corner of the room, where I could make out a paused video that was sitting comfortably underneath a search engine of some sort. "Take a seat," he said placidly. "I will brew the tea now." He left the room.

I did as the android requested, sitting next to the computer and glancing at the search engine upon it. Robin, on the other hand, started poking and prodding at where he wanted to sit.

Finding no reason to distrust the sofa beyond plain ol' paranoia, Robin reluctantly sat down at the edge of the sofa cushion, and frowned. "Why do you think it had to leave?" he asked, looking back at the way Amazo had gone.

I reached over to the computer beside my seat, and started the video from the beginning. It was some sort of old-timey British program (or program set in Britain, either one) where someone had just answered the door. "Looking up what he was supposed to do," I replied, as I paused it again- just as the housewife in the video went offscreen to put the kettle on.

"So he's pretty much a robot butler... that doesn't know anything about being a butler," summated Robin. "Sounds about right." He crossed his arms and leant back on the sofa. "I'm guessing this Ivo isn't very good at AI?"

I shrugged. "Beats me."

The android returned to the room. In his hands were three saucers of steaming hot tea- I gratefully received mine and put it on the side to cool down, while Robin nodded and glared at it suspiciously. Amazo sat down on a sofa- and seemingly found itself utterly stumped by exactly what it was supposed to do with the last cup. In the end it settled on just holding the saucer. "...How have your days been?" he asked, in a feeble but welcome effort at active conversation.

"Frustrating," I replied. "Alas, I can't really talk about it without spoiling my secret identity." _I am equally bad at conversation. My sympathies, Amazo, my sympathies._

"Well, err... school was pretty boring," said Robin, apparently having decided to play along after all. "I did some training with Batman earlier. That's about it, today."

Amazo considered this for a second. "Professor smokes when he is frustrated," he mentioned. "Do you?"

"We're too young to smoke," I explained, giggling slightly as it conjured up a mental image of me and Robin dressed up like stereotypical teenage delinquents. "It's unhealthy, too, so it's best not to start smoking in the first place."

The android nodded politely. "That seems sensible."

Robin glanced between us. "Y'know," he mentioned, "I'm not exactly sure when I got jaded enough to be perfectly fine having a _tea party_ with a _ten-foot robot._ I don't think that much jadedness is a good thing, either."

"Y'know," I replied, mimicking him slightly, "it was probably when you started going out at night to wear tights and punch people in the face at the behest of a man who dresses like a bat to fight clowns. Just a thought."

He sighed. "That would make sense, wouldn't it... Hah."

"Do you refer to Batman?" asked the robot. I nodded. "Professor will be pleased to see you, then," he explained. "Professor speaks of Batman frequently."

"...In the 'I'll-show-them-all' sense or the normal sense?" queried Robin, carefully putting down the cup of tea he'd been about to finally drink from. I sipped my own contentedly in defiance of Robin's newfound paranoia. _Silly Tim, genre saviness is for kids._

The android seemed to have a pleased expression. "He speaks nostalgically," he explained. Then he looked up- I followed his eyes, to see the light from a car. "There he is! I shall go open the door for him."

"Remember to explain we're here!" I called out to him as he stood up and left the room, still holding the cup of tea he hadn't figured out what to do with.

Me and Robin both stopped to listen as Amazo went up to greet his creator. We heard the door open- the placidly calm voice of Amazo, then another, higher-pitched voice. Then there was the sound of footsteps- lighter, more energetic than the android's- and the door opened again to reveal a small, wiry-haired man with a fantastic grin.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, looking ever-so-pleased to see us. "For a moment I thought Amazo here had evolved a sense of humour! No such luck, alas, just a bunch of sidekicks." He tipped his hat, which would have been more effective had it not been that soft, almost plush round cap owned by grandparents everywhere. "Professor Anthony Ivo, a pleasure to meet you both. You must be Robin," he said, gesturing to the Boy Wonder, "and you would be...?"

"Yet-to-be-announced," I explained somewhat apologetically. "Framework, pleased to meet you."

"Getting into the crime-fighting business young, eh?" he said, chuckling at the both of us in our ridiculous outfits. "Ah, to be young and foolish again..."

"You were a superhero?" Robin asked, eyebrows raised.

Professor Ivo laughed at that. "Me? A _hero?_ Oh, that must be some other geezer!" he exclaimed. "Oh, _heavens_ no- I'd be bored out of my _skull_ if I ran around rescuing kittens from trees or whatever you heroes do nowadays. Has Batman _never_ regaled you with tales from his mentor?" He tutted.

"Batman doesn't really... _regale_ ," said Robin, just as disarmed as I was by Ivo's demanour (if still a bit less on-balance than I). "But- _you?_ A _supervillain?"_

"Ah," said Ivo, a hint of sadness in his voice before he scrubbed it out. "Well, not just _any_ supervillain! I suppose you two- if you're also training under Batman, I suppose-" I nodded, to confirm it- "-could call me your grandnemesis."

I blinked. Suddenly, the pieces were coming together. "You fought _Wildcat?"_ I questioned.

"Not _just_ Wildcat," the old man cackled. "The _whole_ flippin' Justice Society of America! But yes," he confirmed, "I always did have a grudging respect for the guy. Though..." He paused, turning around. "Amazo, you can come out if people already know you're here, you know!"

The robot walked in again, slightly sheepish. "I was reheating your tea," he explained.

"Reheating _tea!?"_ the Professor scolded, receiving it from him nevertheless. "Silly 'bot- you can't reheat _tea!_ It's preposterous!" As the saucer passed hands, I noticed the robot stand ever so slightly taller, even as his creator started to grumble about microwaves and 'proper brewing'. My lips quirked ever so slightly upwards.

The robot made a coughing sound that sounded suspiciously like him just saying the words 'cough, cough'. "I believe the children had some questions," prompted Amazo. The old man considered that for a second, sipping his tea as he thought, before he nodded.

"Yes, yes," he agreed. "I'm far enough past my supervillain days to know that lending a helping hand would surely be in my best interests- and a bit of fun, perhaps. What did you two want to ask?"

"Well, I was planning on asking about your work on nanotech," I said. The Professor raised an eyebrow in interest. "I'm doing work on genetic engineering- I'm a bored supergenius, y'see- and I kept having issues with macro-scale gene expression... _but_ I'm also a small child who's just been offered storytime," I noted. "It can wait- none of it's urgent, and it's still a while before I should probably be asleep. You fought the Justice Society?"

"Well, I think my ears would start _bleeding_ if I had to listen to too much science talk," admitted Robin in implicit agreement. "And I need Framework to drop me off back at Gotham once this is done, anyway- I might as well listen."

The old man tutted at Robin. "Kids, never admitting they're never too old for a good story," he complained. "But-! Let's begin. Amazo, could you look up some fitting music, please?"

"Certainly Professor," Amazo agreed, fingers tapping keys as if he were Clark Kent with a deadline to meet. "Ominous?"

"Ominous is good," he replied cheerily. The music started playing, and the tale began. "Now, then- it all started when Doctor Mid-Nite noticed the heat coming off a certain series of roads in the city. These were better days, of _course-_ no just sticking -man or -woman on the end of a name, heavens no, you had to be _creative-_ I'm glad you two whippersnappers thought of _something_ better than that... Oh! You can tell that other Robin of yours that Nightwing's a name to be proud of, we need more inventive fellas like him with our heroes... But _anyway!_ I digress. It all started when he noticed this strange _heat_ on the roads..."


	13. Chapter 13

I took my welding mask off with a smile. The Super-Duper Psychicotron 5000 (as I personally called it, though officially it was the much more dignified Oracle's Throne) was almost ready to be turned on- whether it would stay on, I didn't know, but it was still pretty exciting.

Progress- from a purely engineering...ical basis- was good. Apart from a couple high-energy capacitors, everything was ready and in place. If my father had made it, he'd have called it finished right here and now- but I'd carefully disguised my safety measures as 'fuck you my brain magic needs energy' specifically so he couldn't complain.

If he tried to make his own... well, there'd be a lot of brain damage, seizures and all sorts of nasty stuff if he didn't actually check the ever-so-slightly misleading information I'd given him. Which I expected from him, seeing how he was still blaming me for his last shenanigans, but either way it was no skin off my back.

I started humming as I put the (hyper-advanced superscience-utilising child-safe) welder back in the fabric I kept it in. Fun fact, eidetic memory is really good for when you forget the words halfway through a song. "Cross the borderline of black and white and climb the stairway, up and up we go..."

My mindless humming was interrupted as soon as it started by a knock on the door. I felt a brief surge of indignation, my face scrunching for a second, before I headed over and opened it.

"Mercy?" I asked, suddenly perplexed by the appearance of my snazzy-hatted glorified child-minder. "I thought I had breakfast already?"

Using my amazing and extraordinary super-intellect, I immediately confirmed that I had, in fact, had breakfast today. But that was exactly the sort of thing I'd used to forget a lot, and old phrases died hard.

"You have," Mercy said, nodding. She looked ... sort of uncomfortable. "Eh... Can we talk?"

"...Sure?" I said, inviting her in. I hopped onto a stool, which had an amusingly girly heart emblazoned on the top of it. Mercy went to lean on one of the benches, her ridiculously short shirt-coat-thing being a possible reason as to why she didn't just sit properly.

Or maybe she just didn't want to get comfortable. She always had that slight tension about her- she could be calm, sure, but I'd never seen her just sit down and use the backrests. Both in a literal sense and as a more general metaphor, to do the opposite of narrowing that down.

"You got your birthday tomorrow," she said.

"Yes," I agreed, raising an eyebrow. "Yes it is."

"...And you're not excited about it? Not at all?" Mercy questioned.

"Not really," I said.

"Not even a little?"

I shrugged. "Doesn't seem like a big deal," I told her. "Woo-hoo, I've been in existence for a grand total of one revolution around the sun. Father must _really_ be patting himself on the back at how I've avoided dissolving into protoplasm for the entire time. Doesn't really seem... relevant to anything I'm doing, I guess."

"Your birthday 'doesn't seem relevant'," said Mercy flatly.

"I have been to many parties in my short life," I explained. "They are terrible things and I doubt they're going to end up any more enjoyable just because I'm the centrepiece. And I also doubt whether we're actually doing anything other than that sort of bare minimum 'huzzah, this small child I created has reached an arbitrary yet regular point in her lifespan' thing."

She looked away awkwardly, confirming my suspicions (not that I hadn't already confirmed them myself, but it was good to know she wasn't rationalising to that degree). "I... guess that's a pretty sensible way of looking at it," she agreed reluctantly. "But- the other thing I was gonna ask. Why'd'ya call him 'Father'?"

I raised an eyebrow, not entirely sure what she meant by that. "Because 'mother', despite being more biologically accurate, would also not fit Luthor's gender role?"

Cloning and parental figures interacted poorly. Go figure.

"I mean-" Mercy frowned, though there was something else in her eyes. "You've never called him 'daddy' or 'pa' or anything other than 'father', 'Lex' and 'Luthor'. But you're his little girl, his little angel to him- you never say anything back. Why?"

 _...Really. That's what this is all about._ "Because he _doesn't_ love me," I said bluntly. Her expression faltered. "Anything he says is for someone else's benefit, which inevitably becomes his own benefit within a reasonable timeframe. Next question?"

"Next question?" said Mercy, and I was given pause by the emotion in her voice. _"Next question?_ You're a _kid,_ Lena! You shouldn't be able to say your pa doesn't love you, let _alone_ say it like I should have noticed!"

I stood up. "Well I _am_ able," I said coldly. "News flash- Lex Luthor doesn't love _anyone_ but himself! That includes me. And that, as much as it pains me to say it, includes _you too."_

She chuckled bitterly. "Your entire life," she said, "you've lived like a princess. He does love you. He's just... bad at showing it, y'know?"

"I've lived like a princess?" I replied, raising an eyebrow. "Tell me, Mercy- do princesses get to do what they like? Do princesses get to have friends? Do princesses have a life beyond their room and the court?"

"You've got free reign to work on what you like," said Mercy. "Unlimited time, unlimited resources..."

"Apart from when Luthor decides I'm _wasting_ my time," I snapped.

She moved to retort. I raised a finger.

"Remember that first week out of the tank," I reminded her, "when I discovered dinosaurs for the first time? How much I wanted to study them? How I said I wanted to go to Africa and explore the Kem-Kem Beds?" I shook my head and made an imperious frown. We both knew who _that_ was supposed to be. "Nope, they're 'worthless rocks'."

"They're-" A second finger.

"Remember that time I wanted to learn how to sing, how to make my own music," I said, "when I saw those stupid Super Singer things for the first time? How great I thought it would be if I could be famous like that?" I repeated my previous expression. "Nope, it's a 'marvellous waste of your intellect'."

"That's-" A third finger.

"Or how about that time I wanted to make a video game," I added, "once I'd learned how to code enough for those simulations on the gene project? Developing the best damn game ever made, with self-organising neural networks and god knows what other cross-applicable features? _Nope,_ it's 'plebian nonsense without cultural value'."

"You can't just-"

"Shut. _Up!"_ I shouted, finally having had enough. "I'm _fine_ with you having some sort of love for Father. But I would _greatly_ appreciate it if you respected my opinion and left it undiscussed." I paused, breathing heavily. _"Thank you._ Can we _please_ end this conversation?"

Mercy went silent.

"...When was the last time you felt like a kid, Lena?" she asked me, quietly, softly.

"If my father had wanted a kid," I said simply, "he would have stopped me growing at nine months."

She looked away. I stopped, a guilty feeling welling up inside me.

"...I do... _try,_ y'know," I said haltingly. "...Even if it's just because I enjoy acting stereotypically."

"You can't just... _be_ a little girl?" said Mercy.

"No," I replied. "It's like..." I shrugged. "He used neural uploads," I said instead. "Adult ones- I was never meant to learn new words or go to school or anything like that. I just... know things. What's polite, what's not, stuff like that. Being a kid... well, would Father get a neural scan from someone who thinks being childish is acceptable behaviour? Is that who he is?"

"...What if we, I dunno," she said, as she sidestepped the question- "had you unlearn that sort of thing? Like- get you a therapist, someone who can tell you it's okay?"

"Father wouldn't want that for me." I shook my head. "We both know how he feels about that sort of thing."

I promised myself not to interrupt her retort.

But it was awful hard to interrupt a defeated silence. That felt worse than cutting her off would have, to be completely honest.

She stood up to move to the door- "Wait."

She turned around to look at me.

"I... thanks," I said, not quite sure what I was supposed to be saying. "Nobody's ever really... asked me that sort of thing before."

"If you're okay?" she asked.

"If I ever felt like a child," I said.

She stayed still for a few moments, and I turned away from the pity in her eyes. I heard the door moving- but she hadn't left the room when it closed. I turned back around.

She was holding a box. "He'd notice if I gave it to you tomorrow," she said as it passed hands. Then she turned around, leaving me dumbfounded as she left me alone in the room.

I stayed like that for a few seconds, not quite sure what to think.

I put the box under the bench. "...Well," I mumbled, "that was an unexpectedly heavy conversation." It was for the best if I let my thoughts on the matter gestate, rather than work my way through them right this second. At least while I had other things I could do. _Such as..._

There was a bloop from the computer.

 _...checking my mail?_ I pushed my chair over back to being in front of it, and logged in to see what it was that I'd received.

With my spam filter being highly advanced, emails weren't a thing I'd seen regularly. There were only a few people who even had it in the first place- but when I saw it was from a certain Mr Kent, who _totally_ wasn't Superman, no-siree, I smiled.

 _'To Ms. Luthor,'_ it read.

 _'I'm writing to you because of a break-in to Star Labs last night. A pair of canisters were stolen- apparently containing a substance designed to enhance energy absorption in human cells. With your recent involvement in that fiasco with Vital, I'm inclined to think of you as somewhat of an expert in biological affairs._

 _'With that in mind, this morning we found a policewoman who had apparently been somehow drained of her own energy, alongside another sample of the substance. We're inclined to believe that one Rudy Jones may have been exposed to the chemical- if you could get permission for yourself or one of your associates to check just what might have happened,_

 _'I've attached the directions to this email. I hope to hear from you soon,  
-Mr. C Kent'_

 _...Associates?_ I thought, raising an eyebrow in interest. _Sounds like an open invitation for a certain undersized superhero to me. Tell 'em I have some super duper alien tech to science it with, and wallah- it's totally not that hyperintelligent small child who lives in that company building._

Either way, Parasite was apparently out and about, which meant...

I took a moment to consider things.

Well, Superman was probably on his way to get punched in the face and get thrown into an ocean. I would rather not interrupt some valuable character growth, so I was just fine with that happening.

...Totally not related to the fact Superman would probably be willing to let me access a blood sample or two for medical purposes. Honest.

Now all I had to do was flagrantly abuse my control over the local cameras to get out of the building. I activated the 'sneak me out of here' protocols, clicked my fingers, and got to work.

Step 1: Grab a hairband and change into clothes that don't belong to a very small mad scientist.

Step 2: Exit the building.

I opened the door normally, since nobody could really call me leaving a room 'suspicious'. Seeing the coast was clear, I very sneakily walked down the stairs and, aside from having to distract a few token security guards, pretty much walked out of the door.

...To be quite frank it was almost _embarrassing_ how easily you could enter and exit LexCorp with a little bit of technological know-how. At least it wasn't something that could be circumvented with rubber gloves, which was more than could be said for the museum shenanigans.

Once I was out of the building, I just had to alter my hairstyle with the hairband. Then I could just start walking- by default I was plenty confident enough to keep anyone from suspecting that I was unattended. The only part that really needed any Batman skills was entering my secret base undetected, and that was more a just-in-case thing anyway.

With that remarkably uncinematic method of getting inside, I needed nothing more than a quick change of clothes before I was in my bike and zooming off to the bridge.

The outskirts of Metropolis were pretty in their own right- a picturesque landscape of rivers and green hills surrounded by canyons. It was what had made this place into a worldwide trade hub- it was immediately recognisable, and more importantly, incredibly well-situated for receiving goods from across the Atlantic.

It had been pretty important in the American Revolution, too- its canyons made the place a natural fortress, turning it into nothing but a whole lot of chokepoints for anyone trying to invade, making it the perfect place for the British to send reinforcements and supplies. It was only thanks to a combination of skilled insurgents and native American folk heroes that the city had been taken at all- the freedom of Metropolis had led to the freedom of all America.

That had produced a whole bunch of knock-on effects, which I won't go into detail about right now- but safe to say that it's probably a large part of why superheroes are so accepted. And possibly why the country hasn't made Superman lose his faith in humanity, too, though I'd already had too much heavy thinking for the day to start really comparing the two universes' cultures.

With a gentle electrical hum I descended down into the landscape, landing on the bridge. It was just above one of the marshy tributaries- if I remembered correctly, it had been famous for smuggling in its past. Now, though it was just a bridge.

Well, as far as anyone knew. I knew that this place had given us the first glimpses of the shape of the world to come.

A world where we _needed_ Superman.


	14. Chapter 14

My bike settled down pretty quickly as I swooped down to the bridge. This... this was where Parasite had been created. The first of Superman's many super-foes, and we were still a long way off any super-friends.

To my pleasant surprise, I was near-immediately waved over by one of the police working there. I hopped out, and a policeman with a Stan Lee-grade moustache came to greet me. "You're that expert that Superman sent for?" he asked in a warm, friendly tone. "Now, I might have been expecting someone a little older, but you _were_ recommended by a bulletproof man who flies around with his underpants outside his tights. I'll take it at face value- a pleasure to meet you, Miss..."

Nodding in return, I shook his hand. "I'm Framework," I introduced myself. "I'm an alien from the planet Zok-Bubet," I then proceeded to blatantly lie, "and- since he's a decent guy- I'm mainly here to give our Kryptonian buddy a helping hand. So, what's this stuff you need superscienced?"

He nodded. "More aliens?" he questioned. "Area 41 must be getting angry by now."

 _...I should probably check out if there's anything actually in that place,_ I thought to myself. UFOs could be a potent source of boredom avoidance, and probably also supertechnology for heroing if it hadn't been stripmined for reverse-engineered nonsense by now. Megatrons to microchips and all that nonsense.

I took out the phony analysis tools I'd prepared- as we approached the puddle of ever-so-slightly bubbling purple liquid, I waved an electromagnetic wand (with plenty of useless blinking lights on it, of course). With a magnetic hum, it parted a small segment of the liquid- and as I gestured upwards, the sample floated upwards too.

Carefully, I inserted the sample into my other largely-useless tool. A spectrometer, this time, with an inbuilt refrigerator in order to keep the sample fresh for _proper_ analysis later. I made a show of looking interested as the display on top began to show off some glorified graphs of light penetration, and scratched my head lightly. "Did they say what it was originally used for?" I questioned, for purposes of continued blatant lies.

"I heard 'em say to that reporter Mr Kent it helped energy transfers or sumfin'," he explained. He shifted the hat on his head, taking a look at my overglorified science gizmo. "What's it say?"

I shut down the graphing function. "Good news, it's non-toxic, non-carcinogenic- it just sorta sucks up bioelectricity and stuff," I explained. "Nothing more, nothing less. That explains what happened to our policemen- he stole her excess bioelectricity. It's not an efficient enough process to kill people or any living thing bigger than a cockroach," I added, "and the bioelectricity should regenerate in the victim and deteriorate otherwise- it's a short-term process."

"I'm guessing there's bad news from the way you said that," the policeman said, frowning.

With a nod, I proceeded to explain. "It's going to stick in his system a long time," I said. "Maybe permanently. And, err... from what I know of kryptonian physiology?" I winced. "Yeah, it's better he not get his hands on Superman." Leaving out the 'memory-stealing' thing seemed like a prudent idea- after all, if Father ever figured out he could get this guy to pick Superman's brain for his weaknesses... That doesn't sound like a very pleasant scenario, I think we can all agree.

He blinked. "Hey, Daniels," he shouted, calling to one of the other police on the other side of the bridge. "Didn't Superman fly off to go talk to that Rudy fella who done this?"

"Yeah!" the woman on the other side shouted in a somewhat nasal voice. "Whazzit matter?"

"Well," replied whats-his-name-mc-policeguy, "apparently the guy who got dunked in this stuff can steal his powers!"

"No way," retorted 'Daniels'. "Where'd you learn that?"

"This alien kid told me!"

"You're having me on!" She turned around- and immediately boggled at the fact I was standing here, waving politely. "Hey, how'd you get here!?"

"Hoverbike," I replied politely as I gestured to my vehicle- which was also directly in her cone of vision. Christ, I thought.

"Neat!" she shouted. "Think you can tell Superman about all this?"

...Nope? Not even going to begin to question this? Nothing? Nada?

 _...Wow,_ I thought, _Metropolis police are getting really jaded. And the first season's barely started..._ "Can do!" I replied with a salute. Remembering that being heroic was just as much about inspiration as it was about fighting crime, I decided to add a little bit extra onto the end. "Keep up the good work, fellow heroes!"

Yeah, that comic page with Nightwing and Superman meeting the park security was adorable and I loved it forever. Sue me.

The policeman saluted, and behind his eyes I could tell he was reminiscing about something. "And good luck to you too, Miss," he said warmly as I hopped back into my vehicle.

The cockpit closed around me with a satisfying click, and it was only the lack of an accompanying startup noise that made it anticlimatic. But as I returned to the sky, letting the wind rush pleasantly past from my little pressurised bubble of comfort, I realised I had a minor problem.

Well, when I say _minor,_ I mean I had no idea where the confrontation actually was.

I racked my brains. What could I use as a landmark...?

 _Well_ , I considered, _there's either a metabrawl or the lamp post Parasite tore off to whack Superman with. That should be good enough._  
As I swept around the docks, I kept my eyes peeled for that broken lamp post- by now, the fight had to be over already. Superman had pretty much left straight away to find Rudy, after all.

Instead of anything so convenient, I saw a red-and-blue object hit the water with a splash, and a purple flying man flying away- until he turned backwards, presumably to gloat. At which point he noticed me. While empowered with all the power of the Man of Steel.

Our eyes met- mine staring from behind the glass casing of my vehicle, his glowing in midair as he tried to figure out exactly why there was a small child in a flying science-vehicle. "Damn that theory of narrative causality," I muttered as I realised I'd got here at precisely the wrong time.

He immediately doubled over laughing. I reluctantly turned on the outside speakers. "-some sort of _Super Brat!?"_ he guffawed, halfway through a sentence by the time I could actually hear him. Then his expression went deadpan for a brief moment. "Seriously?" His hands went to his hips, and as he grinned maliciously (and mouthlessly), he cocked his head in a particularly cocky manner. "I've got all the strength of Superman himself now!" gloated Parasite. "There's no way you can beat me!"

 _Well,_ I thought, _time to let the world know I'm up to the challenge._ "We'll see about that!" I retorted. "The name's-"

This was roughly the point where I realised two things.

One, that I had no idea how to actually beat anyone Superman-tier in a fight. Really, I'd been planning to have the kryptonian gene mods up and running already by the time I made my debut- I'd kind of forgot that I hadn't finished preparing at the precise moment I successfully did heroing at Wayne Manor.

Two, I learned that superspeed was extremely unnerving when performed by Barney the Dinosaur's douchey hominid cousin. The startled gibberish that interrupted my epic introduction was, much to my shame, probably being recorded already.

He leered in triumph as his hands crushed my precious Dynacycle's right thruster like it had been made by an _actual_ six-year-old child. (Probably out of cardboard boxes, sellotape and toilet rolls, I mean- that's what I would have done at that age.) Then he swung my poor machine in a semicircle and tossed me- and I was suddenly _extremely glad_ for the inertial compensators I'd installed.

Without them, I probably would have been reduced to a fine red smear on the sides of the craft. As it was, I just saw the less reinforced part of the craft- that is, the _other_ engine I'd spent so long on- being reduced to so much scrap around me as I impacted. There was a fantastically loud noise as my bike hit the water. It started sinking, having lost much of momentum already- I groaned as the exposed wiring and electromagnets discharged to the water around me.

Then my face fell as I saw some unlucky shoal being electrocuted. "Poor fish," I lamented quietly. "I guess the seagulls are gonna eat well today."

A shadow passed overhead- I looked up to see the equally-curbstomped shape of Big Blue above me, obviously coming to make sure I didn't drown. Or possibly chew me out for getting him electrocuted, but really, how could _that_ be my fault?

(Luthor, if you're reading my train of thoughts, go fuck yourself with a kryptonite lance. You know I know you know.)

He knocked on the glass politely, and made an upwards gesture with one hand while the other clung onto the frame of the craft. I sighed as I realised exactly what was about to happen. "Goodbye, fair Dynacycle, with your non-water-proof insides and your formerly-intact engines," I mourned. "I hardly knew ye. May you rest in pieces."

I also mourned my pressurised cabin and unsodden clothes, the moment before I pushed the button to get out- and I was rewarded with a spray of saltwater and popping ears as it equalised with the exterior pressure, before it unceromoniously dumped one small, particular patch of ocean on top of me.

The shock of the water stalled me for a moment, but Superman picked me out of there. The pressure change was disorienting, but without long-term exposure, I was at no risk of the bends or anything like that; in moments, we were at the surface. I spluttered, eyes screwed shut- "I hate seawater," I complained.

"Then it's a good thing you're not a fish," said Superman, as he paddled us both to shore.

Superman pushed me forwards, and I groped around for a few seconds before I managed to find the ladder he'd been directing me towards. _I have difficulty opening my eyes in fresh water, let_ alone _saltwater or chlorinated. Cut me some slack._

Then I started flailing as some sort of cloth assaulted my face.

"Oh, you poor dear!" I heard a woman's voice coo. "That must've been terrifying, getting thrown around like that..."

My internal monologue went something like: _Aaaaaaa. There is a strange woman on my face. Aaaaaaaaaa._

Meanwhile, Superman seemed to be completely oblivious to my torment, or at least unreceptive to sympathy for my vague, muffled indignant spluttering. "It's wonderful of you to offer your coat for something like this, Ma'am," he said. "I can't thank you enough for your kindness."

 _Aaaaaaaaa,_ I thought, embroiled in eternal suffering at this she-devil's hands. _Begone, foul coat. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa._

She moved onto overvigorously trying to dry my hair, evoking a profusion of mildly distressed noises from me as she continued to d'aww over my general smallness and apparent need for assistance. The surrounding people also appeared indifferent to my plight as they approached Superman. "Hey, Supes," said one of them- "If you don't have your powers no more, what are you and your daughter gonna do now?"

I briefly managed to catch a glimpse of Superman looking absolutely mortified before the damnable veil of coatiness shut me off from the outside world once more. "Ah, we- we're not related," he said quickly, before he coughed and returned to his normal mode of speech. "Framework's a science prodigy," he explained, "she just wants to be a superhero too. Trained under Batman, mainly desk work and self defense, I think."

There were some vague grumblings of discontent, but not too many- it's hard to be disapproving of a guy who's punched out the Joker so many times. "So she's going to, what, do surgery on you?"

"No, no," Superman said, as the lady rammed a comb through my hair. "Surgery needs very different skills- and besides, it would be irresponsible to put that sort of burden on a minor." He looked towards the horizon. "I suppose the best thing to do would be go to STAR Labs for assistance- though if Framework can offer some extra insights..."

"There we go!" said the lady brightly, as she folded her coat back under her arm and returned my cute-as-heck headwear to its rightful position upon my cranium. (It was lucky I'd put a strap on it or I'd have lost it underwater- as it was, it had just fallen backwards in the rush of seawater.) "Thank you for being so good- would you like a lollipop? I've got a few in my bag for my own son, but I think you deserve one too for helping Superman."

My thoughts raged between dignity and sugar. It was, regrettably, not a long debate. "Yes please!" I said, politely and with a smile plastered onto my face. As it was offered- she unwrapped it for me, which was disappointing, since unwrapping a lolly was just one of those satisfying little things I liked to do- I looked up at Superman. "I think I can get a quick sample, lemme think..." I frowned. "Does anyone have a cotton swab? I think I- no, wait, my bag's totally soaked. Gah, the waterproofing didn't work very well at _all_... Does anyone have any tape, too?"

"I have some of both, sweetie," said the lady who had redeemed herself with her offering of crystallised glucose. "Oh! Is this one of those cheek swab things?"

"Ex-actly!" I replied brightly, more than a little pleased that I didn't have to explain anything. "I have a little science setup hidden around, I can sneak in with what Robin taught me." And I can get a spare change of clothes, too. My normal ones were completely soaked.

She nodded, and Superman swabbed his cheek with the astounding skill required for something one might do in high school. "Thank you again," said Superman, smiling at her despite the growing crowd around us. "We can't thank you enough, Miss...?"

"Oh, just call me Carlene," she laughed, waving it off. "And our city can't thank you enough, Superman! Who knows how much damage those awful robots would have done without you...?"

"It means a great deal for us to hear that," said Superman graciously. He deserved some praise like that now and again. (Well, all the time, really- but that'd be bad for his ego and whatnot.) "But we'll have to get moving if we want to arrest Mr Jones as soon as possible. Framework?"

"Coming!" I said, and the crowd parted. I looked back. "Thank you, Carlene!"

"No problem, dearie!" she giggled as she waved me goodbye as well. The police were already arriving- but a quick explanation and 'medical reasons', and we were getting a lift in their car to the Labs themselves.

As I sat down on the seat- they had covers to prepare them for picking up people who were bleeding or drunk enough to start vomiting or anything like that, making out sogginess a non-issue- I realised something odd.

I rubbed at my hair. "Hey, how did she get my hair this dry with a coat...?" I questioned incredulously.

Superman looked around the corner from the front seat. "It looks pretty normal to me," he said.

"I can never get my own hair this dry," I grumbled.

"Most people your age have someone else drying it for them," said Superman, and I could hear the slight change in the tone of his voice.

 _Great._ Now, on top of my bike being trashed, Parasite rampaging, my parasite-formula sample probably having been ruined by the water soaking, and Superman not having any powers, the journey was going to be awkward as heck too. _What else could go wrong before we put Rudy behind bars?_


	15. Chapter 15

Kryptonian cells, were- to put it lightly- _utterly fascinating._

I peered through my microscope, wearing a prototype costume I'd made (technically more durable than my normal one, but unfortunately excessively flammable) while my old one dried off. Prodding a few of the cells I'd managed to convince to grow into a proper tissue, I-

 _"Oi, Miss Frames,"_ said Professor Ivo, leaning into his computer like it would make the image any clearer. _"Can you flip it over a second? That cell on the left might be interesting..."_

"Of course, Professor," I said, even as a spike of mild annoyance shot through my brain. _I should never get a job in PR._ Using a more practical version of the electromagnetic wand from earlier, I carefully flipped it over- Kryptonian cells were more amenable to this sort of thing than the terran variety, I found. "What's up?"

 _"Shuffle it a bit to the left... No, no, my left- ah, it's not mirrored, is it?"_ Grandnemesis Ivo was an enthusiastic user of technology, as long as it was either supertechnology or from before my birth date. This livestream method of transferring data and insights, then, was _precisely_ the wrong thing for him. _"Yes, yes- there! You see that? Oh, yes, let me have a moment-"_ He drew a hasty circle around one particular cell with his mouse, despite the fact he could have just clicked on it and had the software do it. _"You see that?"_

I frowned, looking closer. "The super-organelles?" I questioned. Whatever these funny little power-granting cell components were, they seemed to work pretty much exactly how plants _didn't-_ cell-energy chemicals go in, a vastly superior amount of energy comes out. _Because physics is, and has always been, the most ineffective of Superman's Rogues Gallery._

 _"Yes, but look at that one right there,"_ he said. _"It's a really good example, I think. The shape, it's- Oh! Amazo. What brings you over?"_

The socially awkward android was looming behind Ivo as if it were perfectly normal- it probably was. Ivo was enthusiastic about social interactions, but not precisely competent at them. Much like myself and electrocuting Parasite with a hastily programmed modification to the Dynacycle's engines, which I totally would have done if I'd had one more second.

Really.

 _"Your tea is ready,"_ said Amazo. _"I also brought biscuits,"_ he added, carrying an amount that implied I was supposed to be eating some.

 _Ah, Amazo,_ I thought. _You and your inability to identify context. I'd correct you, but you're a big perfect adorable bundle of cold robotics already. Never change._

 _"Oh, that's perfect, Amazo!"_ he said, readily accepting the tea. _"Just what I needed- it's getting a bit late already, isn't it...? Perfect time for a nice hot drink..."_

I chuckled at Amazo once again looking utterly perplexed, remembering that same look on his face when he'd made himself a cup of tea. As Ivo basked in his drink and reminisced about the reasons his coffee-maker now used lasers rather than anything sane, I took another look. _The shape, he said..._

There was _some_ sort of pattern here, _surely._ The organelle was pulsating gently, and I could see the fluid and membranes growing and shrinking in volume. But why was that important? What _was_ the fundamental shape, the thing that had caught Ivo's attention...?

Fortunately I could just ask rather than spend the rest of the theoretical episode wondering about it. _Those 'why don't you just ask' episodes are the worst, regardless of what it's actually from, and I hate them forever._ "Professor?" I questioned. "You said about the shape, but I can't figure it out..."

 _"Yes! The shape,"_ he reminded himself, his drink sloshing around, prompting Amazo to nervously raise a tea towel in anticipation of a spill. _"It's remarkable! It's fascinating, isn't it? Such an elegant solution...!"_

"...Err, I don't see what the shape is," I said. "It's sorta just shifting about as far as I can tell."

Ivo huffed, having realised what I'd originally said. _"What, did your father never teach you higher-dimensional physics?"_ At my blank stare, he sighed. _"Kids these days... It's a higher-dimensional shape! You're a smart girl- I'm sure you can figure out what it is."_

"...yeah," I said, starting to nod as I layered up the three-dimensional shapes I could see. Visualisation was one of my better skills- I'd probably be pretty good at this sort of thing if I bothered with it. "Yeah, I see what you mean. It's..." I frowned. Assuming pressure works as it does in three dimensions... "...Is it... could it be a siphon?" Ivo raised his head a little. "Like- err- a siphon for energy? An energy siphon?"

 _"There we go!"_ Ivo laughed. _"Got it in one! There we go. I said you could manage it. Yes, it's taking the yellow solar energy- all those photons, neutrinos and whatnot- and with a bit of ATP and a decent electrical differential, it's pulling more energy out!"_

"I-" A lightbulb went off in my head. "That... gives me some ideas, actually!" I said brightly, not quite sure why Ivo's words had given me a surge of confidence.

I mean, _Batman_ could do it in _his_ teaching, but _Ivo...?_ What were their methods using that Lex's weren't? I shook my head- _Focus, Lena..._

A second lightbulbed pinged up next to the first. _A decent electrical differential-_ "And- and that's why he's got so many neurological cells in his cheeks of all places-" I realised- "it's the electrical difference! Nerve cells use it for signalling- he uses that bioelectricity to signal _and_ power his superpowers! Th-that's _brilliant!"_

I almost threw myself aside to start editing the serum. _I need to conserve the shape,_ I thought. _Red sun radiation, that'd block the siphons- but it's in yellow sunlight too, just proportionally weaker... That silver ant DNA- I thought it could just block heat, but a few of those compounds could help purify sunlight of red radiation. And with some electrocytes, I could put those same organelles in muscle tissue, too...!_

An email struck me from my thoughts, and I backtracked away from anything crazy, leaving the enzymes to do their photocopying. I checked the sender. "Ah!" I said, quite pleased. "Wasn't expecting to hear from him."

 _"Who?"_ questioned Ivo, as Amazo finally figured out that he should put the biscuits back in the cupboard. _"Robin? Batman?"_

"Reporter, actually," I said. "Clark Kent- great guy, sometimes throws leads on biological stuff in return for a bit more info for his stories, and he annoys Father to no end with his ability to ask basic questions. You two would get along great, I think."

 _"Ah, Mr Kent!"_ said Ivo. _"He's doing surprisingly well, I've heard. Though I don't read that fancy Daily Planet stuff- good ol' Metropolis Times for me."_

"Metropolis times?" I questioned with an exaggerated frown as I opened the email to skim it over. "That stuffy old thing? It doesn't report news, it reports-" _Oh._ "Ah. That's, err..."

"Mmh?" Ivo asked, as I looked over the contents of the message.

 _'To Superbrat,_

 _'Hey! I'm sure you were expecting an email from that kent idiot but it's me Parasite! And boy o boy do I have an offer for you! You tell the world that I've got Supermans powers forever and give me enough money to pay for my own private island aircraft and mansion and I'll not tell the world that your secretly Lena Luthor. I'm sure your dear old pa wouldn't like it if he found out would he?_

 _'And don't even think about pulling out any technology because I have a computer that's ready to send off the emails to the press at any time so if you do I'll just use my superspeed to send off enough email's that you won't stand a chance of stopping them in time to keep it a secret!_

 _'I'll be hearing from you in the next twenty four hours. Not Batman or Robin or anyone else. Just you. I don't care how I get my money just that I do.'_

End letter. No signing off, because he's an awful guy. Not only is he _threatening my secret identity,_ he's abusing grammar almost as much as _English itself_ does!

That _bastard._

"I'll, err, have to be going," I said, hastily going over my biological notes. "I'll see you later, tell Amazo he's the best robot, bye!" Ivo was left just starting to ask questions when I disconnected the stream- I breathed a sigh of relief that I'd managed it before he'd got a word out.

 _God knows how I can't avoid answering a question,_ I thought. _I'd have been trapped for the whole time I've been given, knowing the two of us._

Right. _So. What am I doing...?_ I couldn't use any exceedingly obvious technology- I'd get away with some clear rubber gloves for protection against energy drain, but not much else. My normal costume was almost dry- better to use that instead of the fire risk I was wearing right now. And the serum...

 _Well,_ I thought. _Mutating into a kryptonian is pretty much the same as mutating into an extremely handsome human, so that's not exactly an issue._

But if I wanted to actually stand a chance of winning a fight, I had to narrow down exactly what I'd make the serum with.

I knew what I'd go for first. "Brittlestar DNA," I muttered, "definitely brittlestar..."

Because if I was going to go into battle, the first thing I wanted was some decent armour and situational awareness. A brittlestar would be perfect. With their skin covered in tiny armoured plates that could both be used as eyes and colour-changing plates, plus the convenient little ability to naturally expel foreign objects from bulletwounds and so on, there was nothing better to base a superpower on.

Then sea urchin DNA. As a closely related group (well, not closely related at all, but close enough), it would be easy to implement alongside the first echinoderm. By using that as an alteration to the skeleton, I'd be easily able to recover from broken bones- they wouldn't pierce the skin, they wouldn't even fragment.

And a bit of sea cucumber DNA. Mainly just for cancer resistance.

Finally, a bit of avian- with their advanced mitochondria and breathing systems, plus the good ol' syrinx to parrot myself another voice, it would be the perfect finishing touch. I gathered my samples, moved to the machine I was using, and quickly asked myself- _Would Batman call this a good idea?_

"...Shit," I realised, as my mental Batman made a disapproving frown of disapproval in the manner of Batmans- _err, Batmen-_ everywhere. "Why did I think any of this was a good idea?"

Okay, _maybe_ the eyeball-skin was good. Sensory awareness could help. Apart from the whole 'getting a sense input I had no idea how to use and twenty-four hours to learn it.' But everything else?

 _Yeah,_ Lena, I thought. _I'm sure Parasite will shoot you and break your bones. It's the thing he wants to do most, with 'avoiding a long engagement of attrition where stamina can come into play' being a close second._

So yeah. Basically nothing there offered any sort of advantage right now. At all.

I reconsidered. The _Ophiocoma_ star and the sea urchin, I could skip out entirely. The avian, too- the respiratory stuff would be good, but that was too likely to cause a mutation, being a physical alteration and all.

The sea cucumber, however? I could work with that.

I shifted my attention to the collagen genes- the stuff that makes connective tissue so tough for how thin it is. See, sea cucumbers have a special ability. They can, entirely at will, make those tissues as stretchy as they like- they can turn from an incredibly tough little animal into something almost liquid.

 _Please ignore the innuendos surrounding the varying stiffness of a long cylindrical tube of muscle, because that's entirely inappropriate and it doesn't make me giggle immaturely at all. And that's entirely true. Stop looking at me like that, I'm a sensible person who never lies whatsoever._

On top of the ability to effectively alter the density of my tissues- always a top-tier superpower, even if it's bootlegged from an animal so pathetic it can only use its one weapon (strangling fibres) if it shits out its entire digestive system at the same time- I'd need to make the most of kryptonianism. I'd need every little trait I could get to send the power from 'hybrid human' to 'actually Kryptonian', and I'd realise how to do it just in time.

One- get an idealised supply of radiation. If Superman's cells were acting like siphons, they could get a lot of power from a little bit of a solar boost. If I could get solar radiation deep into my tissues, I could make Superman's powers a lot stronger- and the glass sponge does precisely that.  
 _Goodbye,_ I thought, _direct absorption through the skin. Hello, internal fibre-optics and accompanying increase in tissue strength such a silicoskeleton implies._

Then I had to perfect the supply of light so there'd be as little red sun to block it as possible. Most of that stuff was nearing the hotter... _Hotter?_ I thought, realising it didn't make much sense in reference to light. _Warmy-er? Warmier._ Anyway, red sun could be interrupted by the same sort of adaptations that kept desert animals cool, and I'd gotten a few samples of that sort of thing to go alongside the penguin and plaice DNA on the other side of the spectrum.

In particular, the silver ant is a paragon of not dying when it gets too hot. And unlike the tube worms or vent fish, the ant was actually dealing with sunlight- so with a few of its exoskeletal pigments stolen and added to the gene alterations, I'd effectively be running on rocket fuel rather than petrol compared to Superman. With a bit of tardigrade DNA, it could pull double-duty versus kryptonite- two types of radiation resistance were better than one, and I'd ironed out the last bugs in the last serum (no pun intended).

And finally, I'd need electric eel DNA- which I honestly hadn't been expecting.

I'd grabbed it as something easily accessed from an aquarium, and because everyone loves the idea of zapping lightning from their hands. But now I knew how Superman's powers interacted with his bioelectricity- _ran_ on it, pretty much- I could make my own, bootlegged and much more effective power cells simply by scattering a few strands of those same eel power generators throughout my own muscles.

It was a little more difficult than the other bits- I wouldn't be able to put any in my arm muscles or anything, so no enhanced punching. But abdominal muscles, neck muscles, spinal muscles- I could add a few eel batteries if I spliced here and copied a few genes there, and that would make the Kryptonian protections on my head and body stronger than they might otherwise be. Protection, not zapping- unless I really wanted to headbutt somebody and give them a little extra pain, but that wasn't quite firing arcs of lighting from my hands or anything ridiculous like that.

I went over it again, looking at the alterations I'd be performing. "That looks right," I confirmed to myself. And I couldn't find anything tactically wrong this time- better. I ran the enzymes, centrifuged out a few super-organelles to use, made a second one...

And then I had my serum, in a clean little needle for me to use. Pretty anticlimatic. I pressed it into my arm- I'd always been pretty good with needles. Then I poured out a few dissolved silicon compounds- biologically inert, of course- and injected that, too, for the sake of the glass skeleton.

As I pulled the needle out again and put it on the table, I stopped. I could... _feel_ it, a little. Behind my eyes, and sort of in my temples. And deep in my chest, somewhere, too. Really, I could feel it through most of my musculature- the mildly discomforting sensation of a gurgling stomach, but this time panoramic in scope.

 _Well, this is an odd sensation,_ I thought, much in the same way one might enjoy the sweetness of a chilli pepper immediately before the _severe burning pain_ follows.


	16. Chapter 16

I came to with my head spinning.

 _...Wait, no, that doesn't properly describe it._

I came to with my guts feeling like they were in about ten different knots, my eyes feeling like they were repeatedly poking me in the brain pan, my head feeling like somebody had made my brain into a flute, and a vague, much more general feeling I should probably check to make sure my eyeballs weren't in my throat.

 _Much more accurate._

Of course, my first reaction was entirely understandable- I continued to lay flat on my back, generally having an unpleasant time.

Inspirational, I'm sure. I bet the Flash did the exact same thing after accidentally an entire shelf of exploding chemicals to the face. But alas, I was not the Flash. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't just spend a few months sitting around. I had things to do.

So I made some vague attempts at noise and rolled onto my face, because I'm a competent and motivated person. "Guh," I most heroically said, in a manner that could inspire nations.

A few moments more, and… I continued to apply body to floor until not feeling like I could vomit out my own intestines and strangle somebody with them.

 _In retrospect,_ I thought to myself, throat dry as I pushed myself up, _I probably should have just made a laser, shouldn't I? A laser would have been much easier. And safer. Unless it exploded, which would be bad, but this is probably going to end up making something explode as well._

Damnit, I'd just tempted fate. Now it was inevitable.

Teetering for a second as I got to my feet, I brought up my watch to check the time. If I'd been here for a day... well, I'd need lunch, for one. And my father would probably be trying to murder somebody. Fortunately, I hadn't. "...Only out for an hour," I noted. I glanced at my hands. "No obvious mutations. That's… good." I frowned, then winced as moving my face brought up another bout of nausea. "Though it would be nice if I knew how long is safe to be out when you're splicing aliens into your DNA."

In retrospect, I was suddenly feeling a lot less confident in my scientific abilities.

I headed for the computer screen, legs still a bit wobbly, and turned a camera on so I could check myself over. I took my hat off. "I haven't gone bald, at least," I said, not seeing any differences in…

 _Huh._ I leaned in closer, flicking my eyes left-to-right.

My irises seemed a little silvery, for some reason. Still the same dark-green as normal, but… that was a little concerning. I opened my mouth- _Nope,_ I thought, _it's not some whole-tissue thing. Just eyeballs. Or maybe it's pigment in general, and it's just not visible beneath the upper skin layers?_

I shook my head. Whatever was up with that, there didn't seem to be any indications it was anything but cosmetic. There weren't any problems I would have expected to see if the serum went wrong- I'd just have to hope it wouldn't bite me in the ass in the middle of punching a certain purple asshole (and _wow_ I did not want to repeat that phrasing) in the face.

So. Still alive? Check. Not a tentacle monster? Check. Eyeballs firmly outside of throat?

...I opened my mouth to check.

 _Check,_ I thought. _Thank Christ._

Next on the list was… to check if I actually had super-powers now, probably. I pulled my extendable rod from its belt, and flicked it open. Then I grabbed two sides, and…

 _...Wait, no, this is a stupid idea._ I retracted it and put it on my belt so I wouldn't break my only weapon trying to see if punching would be more effective (spoilers: it wouldn't, at least not against the tactile power-absorber).

"What else is there…" I muttered, scanning over my workspace, before I realised that I had methods that didn't involve trying to destroy things. "...Idea get!"

I jumped in place. This provided nothing but severe disappointment, as nothing but the expected happened- that is, the expected for a six-year-old trained by the Bat-Family over a few weeks for acrobatics, rather than the expected for someone who'd spliced kryptonian mitochondria thingies into their cells.

Frowning, I flexed my arm, trying to feel for anything different. _...There's definitely something different going on there,_ I thought. _It doesn't quite feel how it normally does._ It took me a couple of tries before I figured it out.

My muscles weren't just pulling- they were pushing, too, using echinoderm hydraulic systems and my own blood as a hydraulic fluid. (Or, at least, that was what I was going with until I could actually do a proper analysis.) Which was all well and good, but echinoderms were... generally not known for explosive strength, to say the least. So that was just a lifting capacity increase for all intents and purposes.

(Side note- a proper analysis was something I was _really wanting to do_ right now. But alas, purple janitors of doom took priority.)

Thinking more along those lines, I prodded my arm. It felt perfectly normal on the surface, but with a bit more pressure, I felt a bit of resistance. _That'd be the silicoskeleton,_ I noted. The optical fibres that formed it weren't visible amongst the pores of my skin, which meant two things- that everything was fine and dandy, and that I didn't have any Kryptonian super-senses. Bummer.

"What else, what else…" _Well,_ I thought sardonically, _there's always the electric eel._ That had been planned to boost the negligible Kryptonian bioenergy, but if I didn't seem to have any Kryptonian stuff… I turned awa from the computer, pointed my hands at a nearby wall jokingly, tensed, and said, "Bzzt."

The sounds I made directly _after_ that mocking 'bzzt' were a shrill sound of panic, followed by garbled curses, as I remembered that the electric eels in this universe don't precisely work like the ones at home. This was, of course, because my hands exploded with electricity rather than anything rational or sane.

Or, at least, it had seemed like an explosion in my startled state. In reality it was more like one of those static globe balls flashing into existence, and dying out just as quickly.

Either way, the effects were dramatic- and my eyes widened as I turned to my computer.

The bigass supercomputer that had been caught in the arcs.

In a universe where electricity did _bad things_ to electronics. Of the 'computer go boom boom' variety.

I sprinted to the other end of the room- and was about halfway across when the computer, as expected, spontaneously became made out of explodium.

I wasn't knocked off my feet. Even so, I felt the shards of plastic casing falling around me, and my beautiful hat was knocked off from my head. I caught myself on the opposite wall, panting, more from adrenaline than exertion.

Then I turned back around to see my beautiful, beautiful computer in a state of being most thoroughly broken, and partially on fire, to add insult to injury.

"...Fffffffffffffffff," I said, entirely coherently.

This was going swimmingly. Swimmingly! Not only had I applied an untested super serum to myself, not only had I gotten my bike destroyed, I'd gotten my supercomputer- and all the 'fuck you Luthor this is my kryptonian bullshit' and 'hey Batman give me your contact details' fuckery contained within- blown up.

Due to power testing.

Fucking _power testing,_ of all the ways I could have managed it.

Christ.

"Couldn't it have at least been a dramatic moment?" I groaned, watching it begin to go up in flames. I grabbed the fire extinguisher- the hydraulics made carrying it easier, at least- and continued to curse under my breath as I sprayed it out. "Guh, and now my base is going to smell like burnt plastic…"

I paused.

"...I should not be breathing this air," I realised, and headed out through the secret exit. It was nothing much- just a few tunnels and whatnot- but it was enough to make my secret base a lot secret-ier.

As I emerged behind a building, pushing up a hinged fake concrete tile, I blinked. I suddenly felt… odd, now that the the light was on me. Not like I was going to mutate or anything (though I don't know what that would feel like), but…

I blinked. _I'm an idiot,_ I realised.

Then, I took off my mask, hat, gloves, adorable little cape coat thingy… Basically, all the little accessories I was wearing... and stepped into the nearest pool of sunlight.

Now, imagine the sated feeling after a really nice meal. And the feeling of released tension from just walking around after a full stretch-and-exercise. Then add a few more concepts of general feelings of wellbeing on top, and stir in some random probable non-human biology for taste.

That was what just standing there, basking, felt like. And suddenly, I realised, I understand why Supergirl fought crime in a miniskirt.

...I had a sudden mental image of an older version of myself dressed in a similarly less-than-appropriate outfit, and shuddered. "Yeah," I said to myself, "let's get back in costume."

My attempt at walking was when I realised that yes, I had thought this through even _less_ than I thought I had. Instead of placing one foot in front of the other, I moved a leg backwards- and promptly found myself skidding face-first on the floor.

"...Ow," I said, more out of surprise than any actual damage. I moved to push myself up... and promptly overbalanced when my arm supported more of my body weight than I'd expected.

 _...This is not a good look for a superhero,_ I thought, staring up at the sky with a resigned sigh.

I tried again- and managed to stay on balance, this time. Walking over to my superhero accessories was a bit arduous, and I had to get my coat thing on carefully instead of just thrusting my arms at the appropriate sleeve until it was being worn like I normally did, but I managed to get everything on without tearing something.

 _Right,_ I told myself. _Super strength is not all it's cut out to be. That's why there's a whole speech about it._

Deciding to get any other unexpected powers out of the way, I made some attempts at using them. Laser eyes turned up negative. So did flight. Not even shooting tiny power-granting versions of myself from my fingers was possible.

I sighed. "Yup," I noted. "Formula was weak. Or I need more sunlight. Either or."

Oh well- I could always order in some oriental hornets. _Now those would be a good way to bring the kryptonian physiology up to full power,_ I thought. _Mueheheheheh…_

I took a few more steps, slowly speeding up. So far, so good. I shifted gait into a jog-

-and promptly fell over again. _Le sigh._ My costume was going to be _filthy_ by the time I was done falling over. It was really goddamn lucky I had this conveniently empty alleyway to practice in- well, I'd chosen it as the exit to my secret base thing specifically because it was conveniently empty, but _still._

I worked my way up through the gaits- it might have been fifteen, twenty minutes before I was comfortable in a run, and another five minutes of repeatedly falling off a roof after that. By the time half an hour had passed, I was competent enough to consider getting Parasite's attention.

Fortunately, I was smart enough to do precisely the opposite.

Taking out my heroing phone, I had it set a route. _Minimal visibility, check. Start point my location, check. End point STAR Labs, check._

I nodded. _Let's do this,_ I thought.

I most certainly did not mentally shout the name of one Mr Jenkins in my head directly afterwards.


	17. Chapter 17

Uses of a hyperadvanced anachronistic smartphone apparently include watching television.

I know, right? Amazing. Like something you'd see out of a sci-fi story.

I jumped another roof and snorted to myself. _The far future of the twenty-tens is certainly amazing,_ I snarked to myself. _Maybe I can uplift these primitives to the point of using streaming services, too._

According to my hyper-advanced technology that even Batman would be jealous of, Parasite was busy doing… well, whatever he felt like doing, on the other side of town. I clicked off of the news, continuing my rooftop run- with knowledge of his location to improve my stealth route, I was making good progress towards STAR Labs.

As you might expect from a place doing potentially-dangerous science of the potentially-mad variety, it wasn't especially near the skyscrapers. It was on the tip of a little peninsula-slash-islet, depending on if you considered the thin thread of rock connecting it to the road and land beyond to be enough for classifying as a connection. I could see it from here, hopping along above and between the buildings of the shorefront.

The last few hundred metres of buildings I covered quickly enough- the similar heights of the buildings made roof-running easy, not to mention the fact that I'd just given myself super-powers. Now I'd had time to not spontaneously mutate into a kryptonian abomination, I felt almost… _giddy._

No, scratch that, I _did_ feel giddy. Saying otherwise was a blatant miscommunication of the feeling of having superpowers. Maybe if I wanted to pick up some fine china or something, I'd change my mind, but right now? Being able to leap a distance further than I was tall (not all that impressive, given my height, but still) made me feel like I could punch Superman in the face and get away with it.

I hopped down a building, kicking off one wall to-

-miss and dive face-first into the wall opposite, bonking comically off and ending up landing butt-first on a (fortunately closed) trash… giant cuboidal bin thing. _A garbage bin, I think they're called._ "Ow," I said, rubbing my tailbone as I stood up and hopped down the bin rather more successfully than the building. "Batman makes it look _too easy."_

 _Well,_ I thought, _at least I've had my assigned post-powers kick to the ego._

I got up, and checked my phone's assigned route, reorienting myself. _That alley,_ I noted, and headed through at a light jog.

I slipped through between the buildings. There wasn't anybody around, as far as I could tell- the bridge was too small to be a major route, and it was closed due to the Parasite chemical spill just to compound that fact.

( _Compound._ Snerk. No chemistry puns intended.)

So these outskirts didn't have many cars, and a deranged supervillain flying around was not precisely helpful for making people want to go out and do some seaside shopping or whatever they did around here. It was, however, helpful for getting around on foot, since I wouldn't be seen by…

 _...It's helpful if you're a feared masked vigilante in Gotham,_ I thought, with a mental facepalm. _And not if you're an adorable small child in Metropolis daylight that isn't wanted by the cops whatsoever._

Eeyup, that confirmed it- I'd spent far too long with Batman and Robin. Some good old-fashioned… newfangled, I suppose…? Whatever it was, a bit of Metropolis super-vigilantism would do me good.

I picked up speed as I entered the open- I wanted to cover the bridges quickly. I had no clue if or when Parasite would get back, and I had no interest in being spotted by him if he came back for a quick pick-me-up...

It turned out to be an unfounded concern. I reached the front gates- or rather, the lack thereof, considering they'd been rammed into oblivion by a car during the original theft that started this whole mess- with a feeling of palpable relief, despite the news confirming I'd never been at risk in the first place. I was halfway past the security station, going through the unblocked entrance to the facility, when I heard a startled noise beside me.

 _Oh, right,_ I thought. _There's guards here, and a mop of…_ I paused for a moment- I still hadn't quite decided if my hair was blonde or ginger, and I was no closer to finding an answer than I had been three weeks ago. _...whatever colour my hair is just walked past._ It probably would have been funnier if I'd been wearing the new version's top hat, because top hats, but I had to suppress my giggles at the thought of it nevertheless.

(Yes, I did replace that headband with a top hat to become the most blatant ripoff known to mankind. Sue me.)

I turned back to actually get permission to go in. "Hello there!" I said. "It's Framework, I was helping out with the whole Parasite thing. I was wondering if I could go and see if there's any more clues or something inside?"

The guard- a white-haired man with a big, bushy moustache- looked at me incredulously.

"...Oh, what the heck," he said, shrugging. "You got the credit on the news- that's good enough for me. Sure…" I beamed at him as he rummaged below his desk for a second. "...Here's the sign-in form and a name tag. I suppose you'd be a consultant."

"Thank you!" I replied, with the overearnest voice expected of any small child thanking literally anybody.

"It's no problem, little lady," he replied. "Just make sure you sign in at the front desk, y'hear?"

"Of course! I will!" I replied, trotting off to the entrance.

The lady at the front desk was equally bemused, but Metropolis as a whole seemed to have just said 'Screw it, we're Gotham but with all the edginess thrown into space by our city's new favourite superhero' immediately after a flying man in underwear beat the crap out of a super mega ducky.

...It sounded ridiculous now I said it out loud. Of course, it had been equally ridiculous at the time, but…

Actually there was no way around saying it was ridiculous and I wasn't quite sure why I was attempting to do so.

Such inane nonsense had to be put on hold, though, when a man with square glasses and short, tidy brown hair walked in. I recognised him on sight, and smiled, standing up.

"Framework?" he questioned, adjusting his glasses to account for his raised eyebrows. I got the impression he wasn't the sort to smile much- but I was reminded of the lines from that old Roald Dahl book about how some people didn't need to smile to look happy.

He seemed more the sort to smile with his eyebrows, though. They were very expressive eyebrows, I had to admit, the sort that you could imagine doing little mexican waves if he put some effort into it.

"Emil Hamilton," he introduced. Again, there wasn't anything particularly notable about his tone of voice- I couldn't call him pleased, or excited, or anything- but there was a certain general feeling of positivity I could put to his words even if I couldn't point to a reason why.

"It's a pleasure to meet you!" I replied- then had a small feeling of deja-vu from my past life. "...Wait, are you a Professor or a Doctor?"

"Ah- both, but most people call me Professor Hamilton rather than Doctor," he said. (I wanted to call his voice kindly, but again, he seemed to be simultaneously expressive and unexpressive for reasons I couldn't quite explain.)

"It's a pleasure to meet you, then, Professor Hamilton." We shook hands, and I followed him in.

"So, you're an associate of Superman?" he asked.

"Yeah," I replied. "Alas, I can't explain much beyond that- non-interference clauses and whatnot, y'see."

"Hmm," said Hamilton. "And you're an adult of your species?"

"Oh, no," I replied. "We just reach mental maturity before physical maturity- it's pretty much the opposite of your own kind."

He accepted my completely bullshit answer without qualm. We talked as we walked- mostly technobabble, which resulted in me gorging myself on biscuits in his office as he shared a theory on how we could defeat Parasite.

"We both agree that Parasite gains his powers from absorbing the bioelectricity of others," he stated, summing up his previous points. "And we hypothesise it's likely to take similar patterns- that is, if he absorbs the strengths of a creature, he also absorbs their weaknesses."

"Mrph-rmph," I grunted, trying not to get crumbs everywhere as I regretted overstuffing my face.

(This was not an uncommon occurrence.)

"The issue is, we currently have no materials able to harm Superman," he explained. "But absorbing the bioelectricity of an animal of equal size wouldn't provide any material weaknesses that would caused the bioelectricity to be expulsed from him- it would only make other toxins more dangerous."

I gulped. "Which means we can't just have him drain a dog and shoot chocolate darts unless we want him to have severe kidney damage," I summarised.

"Of course," Hamilton agreed. "But we do agree that he's effectively saturated- that is, additional exposure wouldn't harm him."

"Uh-huh," I said, nodding along. I was interested to see where he was going with this.

"In its original form," Emil explained, "we used it as a bonding agent, as you're aware- dissolving a sample in it, then reapplying to another. The unique properties, however, were its electrical properties. Mr Jones uses it to gather bioelectricity to where it's densest- that is, himself, thanks to the alterations to his tissues."

"But I'm guessing there's a reason behind the whole electrical thing," I noted. "Something that would help us?"

"Yes," he replied. "We applied electrical charges to purify it once it had catalysed a particular mixture- a reusable solvent," he explained, "and an extremely effective industrial chemical, all at once." His eyebrows twitched downwards. "It could have revolutionised industry, to be quite honest with you- but unfortunately, I can't allow it to pass any sort of examination now it's created a monster."

I hummed, making a generic noise of sympathy. _I'm sure LexCorp wouldn't have those issues,_ I thought. _We need more people like you, friend._

"But if we applied a quantity of it, at greater volumes than that which leached into himself…" he said. "And use those same calculations to determine the precise electrical power needed…"

"...Then we could use those same properties on him, but at a larger scale," I realised. "You couldn't use it to get it out of him... but the bioenergy's got a much weaker grip. With an application of more of the chemical, you could just pull the bioenergy right out! That's _genius!"_

Emil looked a little bashful at that. "Oh, it's just reapplication of old thoughts," he responded. "But we'd still have to get a sample of the material- a few buckets' worth, perhaps- if we wanted to do that."

"Is there any left over?"

"Hmm… Yes," said Emil. "It's just in…"

He paused.

"Oh," he realised. "They're loading it for destruction."

"...Great," I groaned. "When did they do that?"

Emil checked the time. "Two minutes ago," he said.

"Wait what." I sprang from my seat, taking out my phone. "Where's it headed?" I asked him.

"Yarnall Biological Waste," he told me.

"Great!" I replied, a surge of gladness rushing through me- that wasn't too far away. I started setting the route. "I- have you got a radio or something?"

He headed quickly to a desk. "I made these contactors for Superman," he said, presenting me a small, watch-like apparatus. "This one was too small, and a bit flimsy besides- but you should be able to use it just fine."

"Thanks, Professor!" I replied, grabbing it and throwing it around my wrist, giving it a tight tug. "You get to work on those calculations. I'll try catch that disposal truck for you!"

"Of course," replied Emil, as I hurried out of the door. "Be careful!" he called down the corridor as I ran for the exit.

I was already headed down the road by the time I realised that yes, I _had_ just completely forgotten to get Superman out of the basement he was currently trapped in.

Woop woop. Forgetting to get somebody un-kidnapped because you were busy talking about cool science stuff. _Lena Luthor, Superman's Pal of the Year confirmed. Eat that, Olsen._

There was no time for stealth- I ran as fast as I could down the main street, almost stumbling once or twice, but managing to stay on my feet nevertheless. I could make it with time to spare, as long as there weren't any interruptions. _C'mon,_ I thought, _c'mon…_

I yelped as something impacted beside me, startling me to a stop. It took me a second to realise that an AC unit had just hit the ground beside me, nuts and bolts splashing everywhere and bouncing off my cape.

A familiar purple shape hovered over me. "What do you think you're doing, running around so fast, you little twerp?" demanded Parasite.

Parasite, the guy with a one-hit-KO attack and the speed and strength of Superman.

 _Well, shit,_ I thought, and dived to the side as he charged in for an attack.


	18. Chapter 18

Parasite missed, his punch hitting the ground behind me. No spiderweb of cracks appeared- he must have been holding back.

That didn't say much when you were as strong as Superman, of course. A kryptonian's holding back would still be a bloody painful punch to the face.

He turned his head to grin, and it tilted back as he guffawed at me. "What do you think you're gonna do to me?" he questioned. Then he stopped, and gave me a perplexed look. "No, really," he said. "I don't get it."

"That's a good question, actually," I said. Really, it was- I didn't really have a plan beyond 'get there first'. _First thing- What would Batman do?_

Fortunately, my training in the Batcave meant I actually had an answer to that, rather than just having to make stuff up.

 _First thing- steel yourself._ That would be a good starting point. I was feeling pretty steeled already, so I went to step two.

 _Next- look back at your actions. Make sure you're ready to fight._

Ah, retrospection. My mortal enemy. But...

I flicked through my memories since the email had been sent, and… mentally winced at my poor display. _Okay, Lena,_ I thought. _Let's check what you're doing wrong and actually put that supergenius intellect to use._

The answer came pretty quickly, even by what I assumed was the standard speed for the average Luthor's processing.

As a general rule, I did not hold up well under stress. Sure, I was good at shrugging it off, but when I actually had something in my face? I tended to go straight from solution to solution, and that's exactly what I had been doing.

Forethought was my kryptonite, but solutions were that little laser pointer you spend half an hour teasing the cat with, and I'd been rushing off to grab them every time I'd found one.

So if I wanted to fight, I had to actually think, rather than just do. Otherwise my morning would continue in the way it had been going so far- that is, not so great.

 _Then check the overall environment,_ said my memories of Batman telling me how to operate a superhero hotline, because really it wasn't supposed to be applicable to open combat. Really, though, it was like The Art Of War- Batman's advice tended to be the sort you could apply to any situation, not just whatever he was telling you at the time.

Batman probably hadn't been intending for me to use it against a supervillain, of course, but that was the peril of giving good wholesome advice for any situation.

I glanced around. _First thing to note about the situation- Parasite is considering this beat in the conversation to be going on too long._

"Well, the first thing I'm going to do is hit you in the face with this extendable rod," I explained.

"...You're gonna hit me with a stick?" asked Parasite, not quite comprehending my actions. "What, is it a _magic_ stick? Pfft."

I considered that for a moment.

"Eb taht cigam kcits morf taht llabnogard wohs ev'i reven dehctaw!" I cried, letting magical power flow through me, and swung it at him.

We both looked at it as it proceeded to extend to about twice the size it was supposed to extend to… which, alas, was nowhere near long enough. He stared at it, waiting it to fire some sort of wizard bolt or something- and stared flatly when precisely nothing happened whatsoever.

Fortunately, his unimpressed look gave me the time I needed to finish my observations. _No civilians in the area,_ I thought, _but a few people abandoned their vehicles. I could hijack one if I wanted to get there first. The first step would be to get in one and get it headed in the direction of the plant._

The zeroth step in the plan, though, would be to get Parasite off my back for long enough to actually do the aforementioned hijacking.

He charged. I rolled out of the way, thankful I was wearing a headband rather than a tophat- it would have been difficult to pull off with an extra half a foot of height on me. I went for my belt, and as he turned towards me, I applied pepper spray directly to his face.

"Aaugh!" he cried, covering his eyes. "You _brat,_ that-" He paused. "...Hey, wait, that doesn't burn at all. Huh."

"And now we know that Superman can't taste chilli," I surmised. "That's useful information if he ever tries to make one."

"...Wait, I can't taste chilli?" said Parasite, his eyes wide. "But- _no!_ No spicy buffalo wings!?"

I glanced at his face. "You, uh, may have slightly bigger barriers than that," I noted, raising my eyebrows at his lack of any orifice with which to consume the aforementioned (admittedly delicious) food.

It took him a moment to catch on. His face contorted angrily when he did, and he threw himself forwards with a battlecry. I whapped him in the side with my stick, and as I avoided his vicious retaliatory motion- a punch driving down into the ground- I attempted another spell. "Eb duiqil neht tes!"

The pavement cracked underneath the hammer-blow of his fist- I couldn't tell how much the spark of magic had affected the spot, but as he pulled back his arm caught.

His noise of confusion was interrupted by a cry of 'Wopak!', and he was knocked off balance as I made good on my promise from earlier in the fight. "Extendable batons," I joked to myself as I turned around. "There's a reason Skitter uses 'em."

Of the cars… there were a wide variety to choose from. My first choice had been a blue pickup truck, but…

Well, when one of the abandoned vehicles is a garbage truck and you're fighting a janitor to get to a waste disposal facility?

It's really the only logical choice.

Parasite grimaced as he tugged his arm once, twice- then, with a single sharp tug, broke the magic'd-up road by pulling out a lump around his fist. Then he shattered what was still attached to him with a single blow. "You are getting really annoying!" cried Parasite, as he turned to face me. "Play-time's over, you little-"

His eyes went wide, immediately before he was ran over by a truck.

"Humph," I said as the boom of impact came from the front of my commandeered garbage truck. "So that's how Question felt. This is probably a safer vehicle for it, though..."

The window shattered under a purple fist. Parasite closed his fingers around the jagged glass, which fractured like ice in his grip. "That's some nerve," he growled.

I shrugged, and jabbed him in the eye with a pair of fingers. He yelped, and disappeared under the truck.

The initial thump and sounds of indignant pain were immensely satisfying, as he lost his grip on the front of the vehicle, falling underneath it. The screeches of metal from the underside of the truck as his superhuman physique ground against the road were, however, rather painful to my ears.

My prediction for what would happen next, however, was spot on- just like Superman had against that Vital guy, the one who couldn't see a menacing name if it hit him in the nose... Parasite lifted the truck into the sky, laughing, not realising we were still carrying on in the same direction simply because he hadn't stopped matching the van's speed.

 _Step two- get Parasite to ferry me the rest of the way there? Success._

It was probably a good thing I hadn't been able to take him out with the truck alone, all things considered- I'd had to jam in a piece of that shattered air conditioner just to keep the pedal pressed down, so I hadn't exactly had access to brakes or anything necessary to drive like that. Parasite Airlines were a much safer option by my reckoning.

 _Of course-_ I thought, immediately after yelping in terror as the cabin of the truck was torn clean off the rest of it- _That only applies if the vehicle's still intact._ Almost as an afterthought, Parasite tore the other half of the truck into the river, and glared at me.

"Nice trick ya pulled there," he growled. "Not very original, though."

"Not very original, says the guy who is literally copying Superman's powers," I said, keeping my voice roughly steady despite my heart being in my mouth. _Remember Batman's rules. Think of a way to improve the plan. Keep him talking, and get what you can while you do._

"Oh yeah?" he retorted. "You're just a clone!"

I raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"Lena Luthor? Famous daughter of Lex Luthor?" He cocked his head. "Ring any bells?"

Fortunately, I had my contingency plan at the ready. Ever since five seconds ago, I'd been waiting for this moment.

 _Lights, camera, action._

"...You think we're the same person," I asked flatly.

He looked at me like I was a crazy person. "I know you're the same person," he said. "Superman was first to notice, but- _hello?_ Are there any other candidates for hyperintelligent ginger toddlers in this cit?"

"You're saying," I asked, "that I am- in fact- a helpless, six-year-old human child."

"Yeah!" accused Parasite.

"One that was kidnapped by a crab-man despite myself being consistently able to fend off a man with the strength of Superman."

"Well-"

"One that is known to live in one of the most heavily-surveilled buildings in the world."

Parasite was looking a little defensive. "You don't-"

"With a known lack of approval of Superman, despite the fact I am one of his closest allies."

"But-"

"And," I finished, "somebody who did precisely _nothing_ to reply to that email, except for telling me to share just how flabbergasted it made her feel."

"You look exactly the same!" he retorted.

I rolled my eyes. "Of course I look exactly the same," I said. "I asked if I could use her appearance, as the most comparable famous personality to myself, and she agreed." Giving a brief pause for effect, I added- "Unless you think it's more likely that you're being defeated by a six-year-old human rather than a mentally-mature specimen of a technologically-advanced species?"

Parasite attempted to formulate a response.

"...S-shut up!" he shouted, and I made another startled sound as he suddenly rocketed to the floor.

I jumped out of the vehicle. My phone bleeped as I did. _Oh, hey, we're here,_ I would have though, if I hadn't been hurtling towards the ground at high speed- as it was, I just made some more distressed gibberish and managed to flail myself into a landing position.

The 'falling from an aeroplane' landing position, rather than any balanced one- I really didn't want broken ribs, and I had no idea exactly how much punishment I could take. My baggy clothes, my edited genes, and the power of the square cube law protected me from most of the damage- but I was still left smashing my face into the ground.

"Owowowowowow," I hissed, clutching my nose as I staggered to my feet despite having just fell at... at whatever speed I'd been falling at. "Shit, that hurt." I checked my phone to get my bearings. "Okay, I've landed just outside the disposal, and that truck should be getting here right about-"

There was a screech of tires, and I suddenly realised that- much in the same way that the original timeline enjoyed gassing the heroes with every aerosol known to man- this universe really liked hitting things with moving vehicles.

Being small, and possessing a lot more durability than musclepower, I pretty much just bounced- though I was definitely going to be feeling it in the morning. Grimacing in pain, I rolled to my feet, and gave the terrified truck drivers a thumbs up. "I'm okay!" I called.

"Jesus Christ, kid!" said one, climbing out of the front of the truck. I couldn't tell if he was relieved or angry- both, quite probably. "You gave us a heart attack!"

"Yeah, I'm in the middle of a punch-out with Parasite," I told him. "You should probably go before you have another one."

Their eyes widened. The one still in the cabin jumped out. "Thanks for the warning!" he called, before him and his buddy ran off at the speed of sound.

As soon as they were around the corner, I caught movement in the corner of my eye.

Like a bomb, Parasite smashed into the truck. Metal shrapnel went flying- as did that strange purple goop. Some hit me in the face before I could bring up my cape- it burned, and I slapped it off my face, rubbing it off my hand on the ground for good measure.

The featureless supervillain strode from the wreck with a sound of crunching metal. "You think you can mess with Parasite!?" he snarled, his visage furious and his muscles tense like wires.

More importantly, though?

He was absolutely coated in the stuff that had created him. I grinned.

He stopped. "What's so funny?" he hissed, not quite angry enough to keep his caution at bay.

I brought up the communicator, and pressed the button on the side. "Question," I asked. "In terms of electric eels, how much charge do I need?"

 _"...About nought-point-seven,"_ replied Emil, utterly confused. _"Why those specific units, precisely?"_

"No reason," I replied.

 _Electrocytes are along the flanks of the eel's body. Calculate the voltage differential from the length of a single eel, determine the number in my arms..._

I lunged. He brought up two hands to intercept me, to drain my power- I rolled beside him, having to rapidly wipe off some chemicals from the growing spill off the back of my neck, and said- "Bzzt."

My hands sparked unimpressively.

Parasite most certainly did _not._

I shielded myself with my cape as Parasite screamed, arcs of bioelectricity being flung out into the floor and the truck around him. Rapidly deciding that standing in the middle of it was a bad idea, I ran for it.

Just in time, because a moment later, he exploded.

For a few moments, I hunkered down, letting the echoes go by. Then, slowly, I looked up to see the results.

Where the truck had been, there was now a crater. Peering over the rim, I could see Parasite- floating face-up in a pool of sparking purple liquid. The goop was rolling slightly, and I couldn't tell if that was just aftershocks from the explosion or if this was gonna come back to bite me.

 _Eh,_ I thought, _Star Labs can deal with it._

I rubbed my face, checking to make sure there wasn't a rash from the chemicals or anything, before I got out my extendable rod and made my way towards the base of the crater. Fortunately, the pool wasn't deep or large enough that I couldn't get to the bottom safely.

"Gard eht gib gul pu," I chanted- the end of the rod hooked around his neck, and I carefully pulled him far enough for my gloves to handle getting him the rest of the way out. Or, at least, I managed to get him out of the pool and onto a shelf further up the crater- I didn't have the leverage to get him any further.

That is, until a shadow behind me put a hand on my shoulder.

I turned around, to see a tall, broad man with a black cape and pointy ears that I most certainly hadn't expected to see anywhere but Gotham at this time of year. "Batman?" I asked, surprised.

"Framework," Batman replied with a nod. He looked at Parasite. "Will he recover? He certainly seems out of it."

I nodded. "It's a sudden lack of bioelectricity," I replied. "He might experience a coma-like state or some short-term amnesia, but he should, yeah."

"Good," Batman replied. Together we hauled him out, laying him safely away from the rim of the crater. "You shouldn't be fighting crime."

"I know, I know," I replied. "...I panicked a little. Sorry."

He turned to me, taking out a little plastic bottle and crouching down to spray it on my face. I flailed a little, but he gripped my shoulder a little more firmly to ask me if I'd not do that. "Panicked at what?" he asked, wiping it off on a cloth and giving it a visual once-over.

"...He knew my secret identity," I admitted. Batman put the cloth away, unconcerned, and sprayed it on my neck where I'd rolled in the spill. "Tried to blackmail me."

Batman raised an eyebrow. "Your disguise is…" He frowned. "Not exactly foolproof."

"Yeah, I thought about that," I replied. "Only when Parasite asked, though- it didn't really cross my mind before. I told him I was an alien and got permission to use that appearance from Lena, who is most certainly not just Framework's civilian identity."

"Doable, with enough PR. You should call a press conference," he suggested.

"I'll ask Father about it," I replied. "I can do it while I talk about my psychic machine thingy."

"Hmm." Batman nodded. Then he glanced at the slight impression of my face in the hardened ground. "We're going to have a talk about whatever modifications you made to yourself."

I winced. "...Yeah," I replied. "That seems... reasonable."

We both turned our heads towards the sound of sirens- him first, me a moment later. "I should be going," he said. "Take this."

He passed me a rucksack, just like the one that was utterly soaked. It was full- I opened it up, and saw…

 _...Presents?_ I'd forgotten. It was my birthday today, wasn't it?

Goshdarnit. "I-" When I looked up, he was gone. No sign of him.

The Waynes, apparently, had not forgotten.

"...Thank you," I said earnestly to the open air. Batman would be long gone by the time the sirens arrived.

I looked nervously down at the still-sparking pool below. _Let's just hope that... Oh, who am I kidding? That kryptonian-empowered goop is going to be a kaiju by the end of the week, I know it._


	19. Chapter 19

I checked myself in the mirror, making sure I was presentable.

Not that I was expecting to be anywhere. Father had… not been particularly pleased with my 'admission' that I'd been in contact with one of Superman's pals, and though he'd managed to get my _completely true_ explanation out to the public, I'd had to make a few allowances in the process.

(Speaking of Superman… apparently Batman had pretty much just strolled out of STAR Labs with Big Blue following along behind him. How exactly he'd entered the building- or the city, for that matter- was a mystery, since nobody had seen a Batmobile anywhere during the whole incident. Apparently Gotham's crime rate had dropped for a little bit when that was made known on the news.)

Tugging at the edge of my skirt, I frowned. Having to actually figure out how to wear the damn things was one of those little allowances. Clothes with open legs were not my idea of something comfortable to wear, except maybe dressing gowns, but apparently it was a 'required skill' or something like that- and one that I was yet to learn.

There were other things, but he wouldn't notice most of those regardless of whether I did them or not. It had been one of those rants I could generally ignore save for the instructions contained within, fortunately. No 'oh, boo hoo, my daughter isn't a robotic underling' nonsense on that day, thank God.

Still, despite Father's pettiness, I had generally been in a good mood recently. Part of the fact was that my bedroom was feeling a little homier. On one wall, opposite the closet, there was a geological map of Metropolis and the surrounding area- that had been in Mercy's little box, and I'd made sure to thank her for it. An embarrassingly girly yet strangely adorable pink plush doll of fuzziness had made its home near the pillow, courtesy of Tim (I wasn't sure whether to be just grateful or ready for revenge as well). Alfred had managed to obtain a beautiful little trilobite fossil from Morocco, a spiny little bugger that had been frozen in time with its head peeking up as if looking behind it, while Ivo (and Amazo by extension) had managed to pull together a whole bunch of different flavours of tea to try out.

Bruce, meanwhile, had gotten me an illustrated book of dinosaurs. Which, if it had been Father that got me it, I would have complained endlessly about.

My finely-honed birthday senses had revealed long, long ago that people only got me dinosaur books when they had no clue what to get me otherwise- in my past life I'd managed to get the same book two years in a row. Still, I knew for a fact that Bruce was absolutely awful at gift-giving, and I was in the same boat myself- the sympathy for his plight was more than enough to make the gift worth it, let alone anything else.

After fondly looking over the various bits and bobs that my room had rather suddenly amassed, I spun around onto the computer desk, and booted it up. There were many things to do- _and nothing specifically necessary,_ I mentally added with a grin. _So… what to do on a lazy morning?_

Lazy mornings were, of course, something I treasured. Normally, Lex expected me to be doing something at least vaguely productive for the majority of the day.

Today, though?

 _Code's compiling, hell yeah._ We'd had a few thoroughly discombobulated bits of brain matter from the Psychicotron 5003's tests, and we'd had to make some adjustments- but this was just mathematics, rather than poking biology and seeing what happened. Simple to solve.

Boring to solve, really. _Somewhere in the multiverse,_ I considered, _Physics Lena is probably bored as hell even if she has blown up Apokalips from orbit with overwhelming firepower by now. Sucks to be you, theoretical alternate self that may or may not exist depending on how exactly metaphysics has decided to work today._

I'd finished the games I could finish, and I didn't feel like playing around on a sandbox game or anything. And Tim was at school. That left the obvious- snooping around LexCorp and seeing if there was anything I could get up to.

There had been some interesting activity in the restricted sections, but currently, it was locked down hard- the sort of security that would require slowly wedging myself in, just like I'd been doing with proto-Cadmus. (And wasn't that a gold mine of interesting little tidbits? I'd need to get my bike up and running again soon.) So far, I hadn't gotten to LexCorp's real juicy details, but I'd prised open that delectable little vault of secrets far enough to make it worth spending a morning on it.

I skimmed through it, for the most part. There were some interesting thoughts on crystal-based constructions and electronics. It seemed he'd hit a windfall of materials science recently, and I couldn't confirm why, though I certainly had my suspicions.

 _Cough, the geocidal alien paperclip maximiser which was totally a more trustworthy creature than Superman for some reason, cough cough cough._

What I really wanted, though, was something flexible. Something I could make a nice cape out of- my first costume was flammable (as previously mentioned), and my second costume was dry but still not ideal. I needed a third.

With luck I wouldn't turn into Iron Man and make a suit for every little thing, but ho hum. I'd cross that bridge when I got to it.

I scrolled onwards to the next page. _Oh hey,_ I noted, finding a familiar name. Project Metallo. _That'd be a good material, if it's flexible enough for flesh substitutes anyway._

It was when I opened it up that I started realising something, somewhere, had gone wrong.

Project Metallo had gone far beyond the mere _material_. No- it was complete schematics, and ones that brought me to an ugly conclusion- kryptonite wasn't something Father should have been aware of. After all, it was Wayne that had the original rock, not Lex. But somehow, he'd found out.

The port for the kryptonite-filled chest cavity of a very familiar-looking endoskeleton was suggestive of that. The lensing system, on the other hand? That was good enough to be proof. You weren't going to make lasers with your power source unless there wasn't another choice. And I sincerely doubted they'd be worthwhile on anything but Superman himself.

I checked the dates.

 _...Damnit, Luthor,_ I thought. _I am going to get in so much trouble for pulling your ass out of the fire._

Their 'willing volunteer' was in here. Today. Which meant I had one chance to keep Father from making an indestructible, homicidal cyborg with a fanatical hatred for his guts. And his spleen. And his brains, heart, liver and various other internal organs to boot.

Really, there was no way this could have gone well for him. Unless he actually made good on his promise to fix up the unlucky bastard that became Metallo without him finding out about the retrovirus, but somehow I doubted he would have.

 _So,_ I thought, standing up. _Time to go stick my nose in places I really shouldn't be sticking my nose in._

On one hand, LexCorp was incredibly difficult to infiltrate. Getting out? Fine and dandy. Getting _deeper?_ Hey there, slow down, you're a crazy person to try and do that to _HIM! LEX! LUTHOR!_

On the other hand, I was an extremely motivated small child with more technological knowledge than could possibly be necessary and an in-depth understanding of the technologies involved. And, of course, all the various files I'd just printed off.

 _I have a one-in-five chance, tops._

I slaved what security I could to my phone, and headed down. Father was currently occupied, an investors' meeting or something, so he and Mercy would be up there for a good while.

With a few techniques I'd got from Robin, I snuck past with the equipment I'd brought. No blaring alarms went off, no shouts for me to get back here or to stop snooping or whatever- I seemed to have gone unnoticed. Even as I approached my destination.

Last corridor, I noted, pushing it open. I couldn't see through the window on the doors opposite, but I knew precisely where they lead to.

I pushed them open, to see a blonde-haired man looking up from the meal he was savouring. A continental breakfast, if I wasn't mistaken. Unlike most people who met me unexpectedly, Mr Corben- the future Metallo- didn't do a double-take or stare. He just looked up to take note of the situation, and paused his breakfast to talk. "You're the little Luthor," he noted. "Fancy seeing you of all people down here."

"Mister Corben," I greeted. I was wary about him- genial though he was, there was an air of danger around him. It was what you'd expect from a world-famous mercenary, after all.

He turned away from his food, leaning an elbow on his knee. "I doubt Daddy Dearest just lets you wander his labs," he said. "You're defying him, aren't you?"

"It's not defiance if it's for his own good," I said, shrugging. "And I think a potentially fatal flaw in that surgery of yours falls under that." He frowned at that, and I saw a well-hidden flicker of concern behind his eyes. Pushing a few schematics onto his table, I gestured. "Notice anything missing?"

"Hmm." He wasn't quite taking me seriously, but he was listening. After a moment, he looked to me with an almost apologetic expression and a shrug. "Looks perfectly functional to me."

"Mmh," I said. "Perfectly functional. That's, ah… That's _good,_ for a new body. Just… _mechanically_ functional doesn't mean the same thing." I shuffled a few papers. "Here," I said, gesturing. "This page- the sensory apparatus."

He took another look. And then he did it again. "...Hah," he said, frowning. "That can't be right. There's no tongue. Why wouldn't it have a _tongue,_ of all things? _"_

"The body doesn't _have_ that many senses. It just has what it needs to kill," I said. "No thermal sensors. No damage sensors. There's pressure sensors, yes- microphones, too, and cameras. But no olfaction, nothing tactile either. Ever heard of one Mr Victor Fries?"

"That's the crazy in Gotham with the cold gun," he said. "Poor bastard can't feel warmth- and… it drove him mad."

The mercenary looked at his food with an ill expression. He took another mouthful- I let him finish.

"...So, what you're saying is that I'm doomed, is _that_ it?" he questioned, stabbing his food with a fork. "Never _feeling_ again, or never _thinking_ again on top of that? Hah. Sounds like a choice between a wooden casket and a metal one to me."

"There's an alternative."

He looked up, frowning, but intrigued. "Go on."

"You're aware of what your disease is," I stated. "Orozco's retrovirus." He motioned for me to keep talking as he shifted, leaving one elbow on the side of the table. "It's got various close relatives, other retroviruses- HIV, for example. And the reason they're so interesting- and, in this case, difficult to cure- is that they splice themselves into your DNA. Dormant, until they inevitably unleash themselves upon the body once more."

"You're saying... You're saying you could _cure_ me," he said. "Just like that. But I remember that Vital guy, on the news. Your mess, wasn't it?"

"No. Father made his own version, and his own version made Vital," I told him. "His own biological work has become... _obsolete,_ to put it lightly, since then."

I tossed him a single, tin can.

He looked at me askance. "Go on," I said. "Crush it."

Mr Corben frowned- and squeezed, collapsing the can like anyone would. He tossed it back to me.

I looked at it. "Your grip strength is well within human norms," I said.

So I took two hands and squeezed it. The metal shrieked- and, after I'd compressed it as much as I could, I dropped a sphere into his hands.

It wasn't quite spherical. Anyone who's messed with dough or foil could tell you that.

But it was enough to make my statement quite clear to him. "My own, of course, is well outside them," I said. "Despite the fact there's no possible way for somebody of my age to manage it. That was my own doing- genetic splicing is something of a hobby of mine."

He looked at the crushed metal with wonder, for a moment- then looked at me, his features schooled. "You want to make a deal, then," said the hardened mercenary. "My life, for… _what,_ precisely?"

"Well ensuring nobody goes crazy and tries to kill me is always a plus in my book," I said. "But yes- I do have a few thoughts."

"You don't seem to get along with your father," he suggested, a glint in his eye. "And if he just _forgot_ to mention the side effects... well, I don't think I really like him either."

I waved him off. "He's an idiot," I said, "but I've no interest in seeing him gone. No, I'm thinking something a bit more… exciting."

Corben frowned. "Go on."

I handed him a sheet. "There are many ways this project here I've found out about," I told him, "could inevitably go wrong. I'd like to change that."

He read through it- his eyes settled on the big red 'Classified' on top. "Interesting. Going against the US Government?" he said, raising an eyebrow. "That's an expensive job."

"Mister Corben," I said, smiling sweetly, "I can assure you- that will not be an issue."

He looked over it again, considering. "...Hmm. I suppose I don't have much to lose, do I? So. If I _do_ happen to be interested," he asked, "how would I get in contact?"

I passed him another slip of paper, and gathered up everything else. "Here's the directions," I said. "Very precise. I'm sure you'll have no issue." I passed him a needle I'd got from my lab on the way. "A blood sample would be useful to have it ready as soon as possible."

He glanced up and down the paper- and took the needle to take the sample himself. "I think we both know this is the better option," he agreed, passing it back to me. He looked me in the eyes. "It'll be interesting to work with you, Little Miss Luthor."

"Likewise, Mister Corben," I said with a nod, turning back towards the door. "Have a pleasant day."

It would take a bit of walking to get back up top. The conversation had been… surprisingly tame. I was expecting more from a world-famous mercenary.

Of course, this did bring up something rather more… concerning.

Luthor had, obviously, learned that Superman was weak to kryptonite. There was a distinctly limited number of people who knew that otherwise.

The first was myself. I sincerely doubted he had a way to rack my brains for knowledge, though, so that wasn't relevant. It was a similar answer for the Bat-Family, and Superman…? _Yeah, no._ Superman was a nice guy, certainly, but he wasn't the type to let an unfair advantage over his enemies get in the way of his struggle for a better world.

There was only one other person who knew.

I'd brought up Mr Freeze as a warning story, but on that terrible night that poor Rappy the Robot Raptor had been felled in glorious combat, we'd accidentally let him get away. (Nobody suspected the crawling robohead. _Nobody.)_ And, of course, he'd heard us discussing that glowing, green rock which gave Superman so much pain. Maybe even had a little demonstration.

So _Corben_ wasn't going to become Metallo, sure. But there were two people, now, who were desperately in need of a new body, and who Lex already had in his debt.

The first, obviously, was Victor. That would be… bad, sure. But it wasn't likely to do anything but bring about a really goddamn difficult fight. The other possibility, though…

 _I need to dig deeper,_ I thought, frowning, _and soon. I don't want to find out what Mr Freeze would do to us if we made his own torment a preferable option to being his wife._


	20. Chapter 20, Interlude- Batman

Batman brought the Batsub to a halt just beneath the surface, letting the rocks of the shoreline protect it from prying eyes.

He'd arrived.

With Luthor's growing interest in supervillains, metahuman or otherwise, it had been prudent to find a covert method of transport between Metropolis and Gotham. It was ironic, then, that Luthor himself had given him the both the necessity and the means. The man had been making moves recently towards a space probe of a different sort to the conventional rockets and rovers- and a few modifications to the design had given Batman exactly what he needed to move covertly between Gotham and Metropolis.

The probe itself had to be designed to resist the crushing force of ice sheets and the extreme cold of alien oceans. Bruce Wayne had made a few, designed to be fully-manned, weaving stories of men fighting alien krakens and sampling glowing ocean vents for new medicines. Batman had recieved the leftovers for his own vehicle. He wasn't quite sure what had spurred Luthor's interest in the oceans of the subterranean moon of Europa- was it just a whim? Or was there something more going on here?

It was probably just that Mars was a lifeless rock, and Europa might be something else. Luthor didn't seem the sort to be captivated by a planet composed of nothing but red sand- a frozen extraterrestrial ocean might just be more interesting.

At first, Batman had thought it might have been a suggestion from his daughter. Lena was a bright girl, fascinated by ideas of alien worlds and alternate timelines. He'd found drawings and descriptions of such things in various, short-lived art projects in her files, when he'd been investigating her after the Vital incident. She seemed to have a talent for drawing- but then again, she seemed to have a talent for anything she put her mind to. Batman wasn't quite sure which of those talents were natural and which were the memory implants Luthor had programmed her with. Maybe they all were.

It wasn't a pleasant thought. Even when the loss had eaten so much of him away, the memories of his own parents had become distant, blurred. He remembered some things clearly, though. Like his father, bemusedly watching that boy he'd been gather all the detective books he could after a Grey Ghost marathon. Thomas Wayne had asked him a few questions, checking to make sure that enthusiasm wasn't built on false assumptions- and then did nothing but encourage him and sit nearby if any questions came up. It was painful to think about, now- but it was so precious to him nevertheless.

From what surveillance he had managed to get on their dysfunctional family, though... Alexander Luthor was not that kind of father. He wasn't that sort of man at all.

Judging by the genetic and memory implant candidates chosen for the cloning process, Lex had a very clear idea of what his successor would be like. The psychological profile was quite consistent- a clever, logical, idolising sort of personality. The sort who could run his company perfectly when he was gone, and who would never let anybody forget the legacy he left behind.

The 'education' she'd been given, too- that had focused on Lex's own skills. Chemistry, mechanics, robotics especially, with a comprehensive education in various other subjects. He'd wanted someone who could build on his own achievements- after all, you couldn't overshadow giants when you stood atop their shoulders.

Of course, the result had been nothing like the expectations. Batman wasn't quite sure whether it was nature, nurture or something in between that had upset that man's vision, but Lena's personality was what Lex might consider the worst outcome possible. She was independent, creative, personable, and haphazard in what she chose to focus on- the exact sort that might end up overshadowing him.

Still, there were aspects of that personality he'd intended for her. She was certainly a genius with robotics. He'd collected the remains of her initial vehicle- she'd called it the Dynacycle, a perfectly valid (if uninspired) name- and it had been… impressive. Lena probably hadn't even realised it. If she were anything like Lex, her armoury would be entirely mechanical- but the deficit of implanted biological or geological knowledge seemed to have left her craving more of those challenges, throwing other options to the wayside simply because they bored her.

That brought up another aspect of that prototype personality which had made it through- the idolisation.

 _It's a trainwreck waiting to happen,_ he thought.

Luthor or Mercy hadn't caught her attention, but- like the rest of the United States- Superman certainly had. Here, in front of her, was everything her father wasn't- noble, righteous, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. She idolised Superman- and, once they'd met, Batman as well, much to his chagrin- and her hero worship was bad enough she'd got it in her head she needed to help.

He'd considered refusing her, trying to convince her to just return to a normal life. Alfred had pointed out two things- that her 'normal life' wasn't an especially happy one, despite all the luxuries she had, and that any girl who tried to fight crime right under Lex Luthor's nose was likely not going to be stopped by a little bit of disapproval. Usually, he didn't regret the decision he'd made- Lena was motivated, diligent, kind, the seed for being a true hero someday.

Sometimes, though, he did regret it.

He'd managed to access a few of her notes- while she privately mocked her own father's reliance on technology for security, she'd made the same mistake, and physically entering her base to read them was easy enough. Her ideas… they were, in many ways, frightening.

Superman was already, for all intents and purposes, a physical god. Bullets couldn't pierce his skin, jets were as vulnerable as branches to his grasp, tanks could be seared in two by a mere look. He was the perfect being.

Lena had seen perfection, and wanted to go beyond.

Silver ant pigments, to keep 'red sun' or 'kryptonite' wavelengths of light from blocking the energy siphons Superman used to maintain his power. Glass sponge skeletal matter, to more effectively distribute the light that empowered him. Electric eel and oriental hornet genes, to escalate the levels of bioenergy to something even Superman couldn't hope to match.

And judging from more recent notes- avian neural density, nerve rearrangement- this wasn't going to stop any time soon. If everything went well for her, she wouldn't only be getting more learned, she'd be getting more _intelligent._ Where, then, would she stop? The strength to defeat Superman? The strength to defeat ten? A hundred? More?

The worst thing was, she considered it a _hobby._ Something to pass the time.

She'd mentioned it being 'like going to the gym' for her- a method of self-improvement that she could just do for fun, something that would make a happier, healthier Lena in the future. She didn't have an end goal, she just did it because there wasn't any reason _not_ to- and, if he was being honest, probably as an act of rebellion against her father as well.

The action was a clear threat- heading towards a terrifying destination. And yet it was also a child, finding a way to express herself, at no cost to herself or anyone else.

It wasn't a situation that had some clear, easy answer. So he'd added to his contingency plans, and- despite what he'd said to her- he still hadn't what he'd wanted to say, when he found her worn out, happy, and standing over a supervillain fried by his own stolen bioenergy. He'd ground out every reason why what she'd done had been stupid and reckless, yes- but he still hadn't said what he needed to.

That day hadn't been the day. Today wouldn't be either.

He entered the base. Framework- as Lena had called her flimsily-constructed costumed persona- was sitting at the computer, typing away, looking over schematics and layouts, as oblivious as anyone ever was to his presence.

She was wearing the third version of her costume, having finally settled on a bowler hat as her headwear of choice. Her backpack was new, as well- but adjacent to her chair sat the one he'd delivered her gifts in, stuffed to the brim with snacks, sweets and cheap bottles of flavoured water. And the second Dynacycle had been constructed at some point, its sleeker shape (somewhat more like a kart than a bike) hiding a multitude more thrusters to help it endure the damage that had destroyed the last one.

He walked around her chair, heading to the side of the room. He got her attention with a cough when he was there, and stepped out of the shadows that had concealed him. "Framework," he said.

The girl looked up from her work. She glanced at the wall behind him, wondering exactly how he'd got there- _we'll need to work on her situational awareness,_ he thought- then tried to find anywhere to look but the place he was standing. "...Ah, Batman!" she said, with fake cheer. _Good,_ he thought, _she knows she's in the wrong._ "...How are you today?"

Neither he nor the girl appreciated long, winding conversations. When the two of them talked, it tended to be short but meaningful- _best to be blunt, then._ "Where's John Corben?" he asked of her.

Lena dropped the cheer, and grimaced. She fidgeted uncomfortably. "I, ah…" she started, then paused. It took a moment for her to work up the courage for her next sentence. "...I can't really tell you that. ...Sorry."

Batman frowned. "You donated a cure for Orozco's retrovirus to the International Institute of Medicine yesterday," he pointed out. "The exact rare disease Corben was suffering from."

She waved her hands in a negative gesture. "Um- I'm not saying I _don't_ know where he is," she said, attempting to clarify. "I do. I just… I just can't tell _you_ that." A pause. "Or any other enforcers of truth, justice and the American Way, for that matter," she said sardonically- if there was one thing the girl didn't like, it was serious moments, and she tried to break them whenever possible.

Unfortunately, this was a serious matter- she could make all the sarcastic comments she liked, but none of them were ending this conversation any sooner. She'd left a chair out for him, anticipating this talk- he accepted it, and sat down. "Why not?" he asked. "He's a criminal."

"Because…" The girl tugged at her sleeve. "Well… I'm _obligated,"_ she said.

He leaned forwards. "Go on."

The girl looked to the side of the room, and huffed in irritation. She wasn't irritated at him- or rather, that's what she'd told him when she'd done it before. To Batman it just seemed like she was trying to divorce that feeling from him, rather than not having it in the first place. "He was dying when I pulled him out from working with Father," she explained. "And he was being offered his freedom by Father, just… not in a way that would end well."

"Going back to prison is better than both of those things," he pointed out. Lena's expression told him she knew that just as well as he did.

"Yes, but… it wouldn't have been a _better offer,"_ she told him. "He'd have taken Luthor's offer anyway, to stay a free man. If he didn't accept, then…" The girl shrugged helplessly, despite her more confident facial expression. "What would I have done then? Told the authorities, 'oh, my papa's got a terrorist in his basement, could you come pick him up so I can do gene surgery on him?' Pfft," she scoffed. "Like that would do anything."

"You could have done that," said Batman.

Lena looked away. The confidence left her face. "...no," she replied guiltily. She was thinking about her father. "I can't."

And there was the other half of that dysfunctional familial relationship.

For all the maturity of her actions, Lena wasn't emotionally mature yet. As far as he was aware, the closest thing she'd had to a peer for most of her life was Mercy Graves- she was fortunate the woman held a level of sympathy for her. Before Robin, it had just been herself, Mercy and Luthor himself.

Luthor kept his crimes- those infuriating, well-covered crimes- out of his private life. Unfortunately, Lena was too curious for that- she'd actively dug those crimes up just to see what he was doing. It was… normalised, for her. She didn't see Luthor's criminal nature as something that could be solved, but something inevitable, something she couldn't change.

So she made no effort to. Having met Luthor, and having seen the depths he could sink to, Batman couldn't blame her. But it was more than that.

Lena knew, academically, that she should have reported those crimes a long, long time ago. She'd resigned herself to doing it, he'd realised, at _some_ point in her life. But her biological father was the only parental figure she had. Mercy was too lax to be one- after all, she was paid to be a bodyguard, not a child minder. And she seemed to think of Alfred as being more like an uncle. Superman and himself, there was _no_ chance- her hero worship was in the way.

Which left just Luthor. A man who didn't care about her, who wouldn't lift a single finger for her, who would use her as bait just to get a military contract- and yet, he was her bastion of stability, that one part of the world that seemed to make perfect, perfect sense to her. She _did_ love him, that much was obvious.

She called him 'father', 'Lex' or 'Luthor' when she talked about him- certainly not an affectionate choice of words- but her lexicon changed when she discussed him indirectly. Sometimes she called him 'dad'- just now she'd even called him 'papa', and she didn't even seem to have _noticed._ Consciously, Lena seemed to think the reason she wouldn't stop him was just because it was wrong for a child to do that to their parent. The real problem was that she really did love her father, even if she got nothing from that love in return.

 _If you could ever call a child's love a problem,_ Batman thought, _now is that time._

So they _both_ knew, both Batman and Lena herself, that it wasn't a healthy relationship- and if anything was proof of it, the fact a seven-year-old girl could look at her father and say he wasn't good enough had to be. She needed to be removed from him, put with a real family. Somebody who _would_ love her.

And yet… doing that to Luthor, to _her,_ could potentially shatter her trust in him. It was a complicated situation even _before_ taking her capabilities into account.

With those capabilities in mind? Batman just didn't know how to go about it. Even _Alfred_ didn't know how to go about it- he'd asked. Some situations just didn't have a good answer, and yet... he needed to find one anyway.

But he didn't have one, not now. So he sat there with her, in silence. Without that answer… he didn't have a course of action to take. Not an _acceptable_ one, anyway. Lena didn't know how to justify breaking her word without being unable to justify letting her father be a free man, and Batman didn't know what Lena would do if he tried to bring Corben- and by extension, Luthor- to justice. So Lena felt she had to keep her word, and Batman couldn't take Corben in without making her a liar- and though she was content to hide the truth, the girl couldn't stand being made a liar. Perhaps even enough to override her approval of him.

 _A bad situation, with bad choices. Just like any night in Gotham,_ he thought sourly. So he changed tactics. "Why have you hired him now he's cured?" he asked. He hadn't been able to see her files since he'd been hired- this was a question he wanted to know the answer for.

The girl seemed grateful for the change of topic- they both knew this wasn't over, but they also knew it wasn't something they wanted to answer today. "Okay," she said eagerly, "so I hacked the US government."

"...I'm aware," Batman said disapprovingly.

She scoffed. "Like _you_ didn't hack them five years ago."

"I didn't," he said truthfully. "It's a good way to get the wrong sort of attention, Framework."

"You should probably start soon, then," she responded, passing him a document. "There's things you want to see. Or don't want to see, as the case may be."

He flicked through it. "Codename: Ten," he read. "Enhanced strength, durability. Unable to feel pain." He skimmed those pages more closely, his frown getting deeper with each page. "Codename: King. Pyrokinetic blasts. Codename: Jack, autoelasticity. Codename: Queen, ferrokinesis. Codename: Ace. Eye-contact-based insanity inducement." He glanced at the pages. "These are _children."_

"With a playing-cards theme _and_ somebody capable of driving the entire country insane if they got a hold of a decent news network," Lenas snarked. "Really, I don't see _any_ way this could have gone well for the government- it's practically an open invitation for the Joker to come in, kill all their dudes, and use their feelings of resentment to try and make the world burn. _Again."_

He flicked through some more pages. "This Ace girl," he said. "They're using some sort of headband to control her."

Lena looked uncomfortable. "...It's more like a reversible lobotomy than conventional understandings of the term," she told him.

His eyes narrowed at the page. _I'm not surprised she's uncomfortable,_ he thought. _The girl's not much younger than she is._

So that was why. She wanted to rescue these children- and Corben made for a deniable asset.

That left one question. "Do you think there's good in Corben?" he asked.

She blinked at the sudden change in topic. Then she looked down in thought.

He let her think.

"...Honestly? No," she replied. "...But I think there's the potential for it, somewhere."

"That's good enough for me," said Batman. A white lie. "He can help."

Lena looked up at him, eyes wide. "You're going to help?"

"There's people who need me," Batman replied.

She grinned, and opened up the notes she'd made on her plan. Time would tell if he'd regret his implicit permission for Corben to go free.

But saving those children, keeping them from being turned into weapons, giving them _real_ lives… He wouldn't regret that. He'd _never_ regret that.

If only he knew how to do the same for Lena.


	21. Chapter 21

Ugh. While a good idea if you want a Totally Not A Gun, nonlethal crossbows are just plain awkward to make. And here I was, running simulations and making diagrams on my LexCorp room's more powerful computer, trying to design a whole _collection_ of them.

The issue came up when Corben, who I was currently keeping out of the way with ample orchestral television and whatnot, had been discussing what gear he'd be using. At first I'd considered nonlethal rounds. Then I considered that firstly, Batman would be mildly irritated by having to be on a mission alongside a guy lugging a gun around, and secondly, I would somehow have to get a hold of one of said guns.

True, it wouldn't be _too_ hard considering the nonsense I'd got up to with my secret base (or secret bases, seeing as I had Corben's hidey-house on top of the normal stuff), but I was a lot more comfortable secretly buying computers than assault rifles.

So I'd ended up working on something from scratch. Corben had been somewhat miffed… until he actually _had_ one of the things, at which point he'd requested a full set.

The gist of it was that once I'd made some bits for carbon sequestration and molecular printing, all I needed was to add chips and computing and suddenly you're pulling hyper-accurate crafted-for-conditions bolt shafts from thin air to deliver your nonlethal rounds. The concept was similar to a Mass Effect gun- those ones used batteries to make up for a lack of propellant and material, while these crossbows… also used batteries to make up for a lack of propellant and material, but not quite to the same absurd degree.

 _Damn my unfortunate lack of superscientific bullshit._

But while electrically-enhanced pellet-loading crossbows of doom were awesome, they were also being designed from the ground up. My current effort with the machine crossbow was pretty much a stack of the electrical strings, and I was trying to convince the electromagnetism to end up with the magnetism from each string working on the next one to effectively chain momentum.

So basically I wanted a man-portable gatling crossbow without any spinny bits, which kinda defeated the point of calling it a gatling crossbow. Not a multi-day problem, it was more fiddly than difficult, but still. It was a lot more irritating than the shotgun crossbow.

(Just you watch. I'll make them so reminiscent of guns that I'll end up offending Batman anyway.)

As I continued fiddling with variables, I looked up to see a notification on the computer. "Boop," I mumbled, opening it up.

The screen opened up with a familiar face- or, rather, lack thereof- tilting the camera this way and that, looking rather similar to Doctor Ivo's own fumbles with technology. _"Oh, it's working,"_ muttered the Question, before he spoke up. _"Hello, Miss Luthor,"_ he greeted.

"Question," I greeted pleasantly, deciding to let my programs iterate the crossbow for a while. "You running one of your crazy-yet-inevitably-correct conspiracy theories again?"

 _"I wouldn't call that much of a Question,"_ he replied. _"I've got a few of my own, in fact. If you have the time, of course?"_

"Of course," I responded. "You can only plan to counter the government's psychic superweapon research for so long, after all."

 _"First Question,"_ he said flatly. _"Was that a joke, and if not, do you mean the one in Nevada or Alaska?"_

 _There's more?_ "Yes, and Nevada," I told him.

 _"Hmm… Very astute,"_ he replied. _"The Alaskan one is just a front for the Mongoose Cult. It's a negligible threat."_

"That's… good," I said.

 _"Indeed."_ He adjusted his hat. _"I'd hate to see you encounter them too soon."_

"And what defines when 'soon' is over?" I asked him, honestly curious.

He grunted in thought. _"Well… The most obvious would be when rounded aglets come into fashion again,"_ he replied. _"Simple enough."_

"I see, I see," I said, completely unable to link the information together in any rational way.

 _"You don't get it,"_ the Question noted.

"Nope!" I cheerfully replied, plastering a smile onto my face. "Not at all."

 _"Think about it, then,"_ he said, putting a hand to his face (or lack thereof) with a sigh. _"I do mean it when I say it's simple enough. Next question?"_ I nodded. _"What would you consider to be your favourite dinosaur?"_

"It oscillates," I told him. "Usually between _Neovenator_ and _Eotyrannus_ , but I think _Dryptosaurus_ is my favourite right now."

 _"Could you give a brief summary on them?"_

"They're all theropods- err, meat-eating dinosaurs," I amended. "The former is a carcharodontosaur- a smaller relative of things like _Giganotosaurus_ or _Carcharodontosaurus_. A blade-toothed dinosaur, to summarise. The latter are both distant relatives of tyrannosaurs with massive hands, which is ironic, because…" I paused my ramble to waggle my fingers in imitation of a certain famous giant theropod. "Y'know. Rex hands."

 _"...Interesting,"_ said the Question, as if that actually meant something. _"Any particular reason for the dryptosaur?"_

"It's like the other two, but more patriotic," I responded. "East Coast versus UK. They're all pretty similar otherwise."

He nodded. _"Just one or two more questions, then. Your favourite Super Singer?"_

"Pink," I said. "I have much better taste than most people my age."

 _"Ah,"_ the faceless man said, sounding like he'd come to a conclusion. _"Then that brings me to the final Question. Have you checked your security systems in the past…"_ The Question paused to scribble on something. _"...twenty minutes? I suggest you do so, Miss Luthor- I'll talk to you later."_

The screen clicked off before I could inquire further. "...Check my security?" I asked myself, frowning.

I opened up a new tab that I wasn't really supposed to have- the monitors seemed normal at a glance. I switched my analysis program over to the past twenty minutes' security footage for a moment.

It immediately highlighted a sequence of rooms that, I realised with growing dread, lead directly to a certain room I'd rather not have anybody entering.

"...Sonovabitch," I swore, locking my computer while the program chugged along. Then I grabbed my welder and shoved my pockets full of random potentially-helpful bullshit. I'd need it.

Now, as far as not creating any supervillains went, I'd been pretty good so far.

I mean, yes- Nora Fries had, begin finger quotes, _unexpectedly_ gone into remission and then _mysteriously_ disappeared, end finger quotes, directly after I'd deprived my father of a potential Metallo. As had Mr Freeze and a quantity of his henchmen. So in the near future, the creation of Metallo, But A Ballerina Chick Or Something was reasonably likely.

And yes, I _had_ distinctly been lacking in the whole 'keeping my formulae secret' up until the point some electrician had been given a modified version and promptly started trying to vomit on Superman. And by 'modified' I mean 'hypertrophied without regard for sanity _or_ good scientific method'.

But those were both things I could quite easily- and, in fact, did- blame Father for without any feelings of guilt or other moral repercussions myself.

Letting somebody run directly into my workshop and either use my 'let's get unlimited psychic power!' machine or steal something for later use? _Yeah, no,_ I thought. _I've just beat up my first supervillain. No way I'm getting interrupted on that._ I pushed a button to call the elevator- it was the fastest way down there.

When it didn't respond, I checked the systems on my phone. Whoever this was, they wanted to cover their tracks- for the brief time before I noticed, they'd hacked both the security and the elevator. Of course, I had a _lot_ more experience with that sort of thing.

It took less than a minute for me to be heading down and stepping happily out onto the right floor. Not an issue, to summarise.

The guns on the other side, however?

They were more of a problem.

I ducked behind the side of the elevator with Bat-trained reflexes as they opened fire, unbelievably loud in the enclosed space. _Fuck,_ I thought, ears ringing, as they closed down again. _I have no idea if I'm bulletproof for normal guns, let alone LexCorp security!_

It was at this point I noted two things.

One, the bullets that had entered the elevator didn't ricochet and hit me, despite the inside of an elevator being a ridiculous place for that to not happen. By all suggestions, the bullets simply… weren't bouncing, at least not to a dangerous degree.

Two… I looked down at the equipment I'd brought, and grinned. _I have a safety welder,_ I thought.

Now, the guns were on a different system to the one I hacked so regularly, which was a testament to the preparation of these invaders. (The live guns were a point against them simply being given permission to fuck with me, considering that Lex had hired freaking Deadshot to protect me from Vital if worst came to worst during that whole fiasco.) However, I still knew _precisely_ how these guns' automatic targeting systems worked- after all, I'd stolen it for my own work before.

I burned a few shapes in the side of the elevator, and then cut the piece off entirely. A moment later, I was pushing it up the side of the inside wall, welding a side into place, and then swivelling it out and giving it one last weld before the guns could knock it off.

The guns were thunderously loud- but this time, I was crawling underneath what they recognised as the perfect target, and I bypassed them easily. Whether it was the bullets or the sheet material that didn't bounce, I wasn't sure, but I carried on regardless- cutting open the floor and organising a nice burnout of the local subsystem in the process.

As I set the burnout off, I heard an explosion, and winced. _Whoops. Good thing they're not dumb enough to invade LexCorp while Father's in, or he'd probably have heard that._

I carried on. There were a few more barriers- mostly of the 'large locked door' variety- but really, they weren't an issue when I had a welder and a direct route to half the electronics they'd messed with. I didn't know precisely how they'd removed everyone else from the premises- after all, you'd expect to see at least one security person by now, since they seemed to have bargained on not being noticed up until they figured out I'd been tipped off- but they'd done a pretty good job, which meant it was just me and a straight line to the psychic room as the locked-down doors opened before me.

I checked my phone as I got close. _They're watching the door._ It seemed to be a woman- lean, heavily armed, and wearing clothes that were simultaneously suitably-covering for combat and too tightly-fitted for me to describe without complaining about how ridiculous it looked for what seemed to be a secret agent to dress like that.

After another moment, I checked the reconstructed, unhacked video. She'd been wearing a labcoat earlier, with another face and some sort of fully-clothed body suit over herself to look like a wide-bodied, rather jovial woman rather than the woman who was aiming a shotgun at the sheet my welder was cutting from the door.

It was a damn good disguise- I was impressed. _I'll have to check that out later._

Her finger was hovering over her gun's trigger, from what I could see in the cameras. For all she knew, I was some sort of supervillain technopath monstrosity- her perspective had been her control cutting out, the guns ceasing to function, and the sound of something silently approaching save for the opening and closing of doors. I wasn't jealous of her.

 _That said,_ I thought as I prepared my own ploy, _I'm also not particularly sympathetic._

As I cut the last part away, there came a noise like someone slamming a heavy book onto a table. The shotgun pellets ricocheted down the empty corridor behind me, and I considered myself fortunate that apparently our own security systems were specifically designed to _not_ do that.

Then I opened the door, raised an instant-freeze pack- one of those little knicknacks I tended to stuff my pockets with- and pressed the button. It was fortunate that the welder was, in fact, a LexCorp safety welder, suitable for children. _Otherwise it wouldn't be nearly so easy to weaponise._

It exploded, and the agent- _Catsuit will do for now, I think_ \- gasped as a burst of ice froze her arm in place. Her leg lashed out with a kick, aimed for what would have been my face had I not in fact been a small child rather than the sort of combatant she'd expected. The rough ice surfaces were concealing her vision, and she might have had some on her face, too- she was relying on reflex, and that was precisely the worst thing to do when something messed your expectations up as badly as fighting a small child (if she'd even figured it out) did.

Catsuit wrenched her arm, and the ice shattered- but not before I'd altered the settings slightly and raised a chalk to my welder. A plume of dust followed up on the last hit, and she fired her shotgun blindly- and unfruitfully, as evasive techniques based on smokescreens of one type or another were most certainly something I knew. She coughed, turning away and raising her free arm in a guard to try and clear her throat- she couldn't fight if she was choking on powder, after all.

I wasn't one for a fair fight, so I took the opportunity to slip underneath her guard, grab her gun, and punch her at roughly eye-height.

Understandably, she crumpled with a squeak. The door to my science room was already open- I dashed in behind her to grab the last thing I needed, grabbed something from the desk, and raised the gun behind me.

Catsuit was already in my sights, having lunged after me. She didn't freeze, despite looking down the barrel of a shotgun- she dodged to the side, and her fist began to move in a way that was going to hit me _right_ in the schnozz.

At least, it would have, if I didn't dodge- which gave me the perfect opportunity to stick her full of the sedative I'd grabbed. _Thank God I'm too lazy to clear up properly._

She stumbled- I'd been using fast-acting stuff. After all, you had to when you were experimenting on psychic, disembodied brain tissue. As she turned around, it looked like she'd had a little much to drink. "The fuck did you just put in me, you little bitch!?" she hissed, and I looked up into her hawkish face.

In lieu of an answer, I kicked her in the shin, and she fell on her ass. I smirked, deciding to take a page out of my father's book. "The name isn't 'little bitch', madam," I said clearly. "The name. Is. _Lena. Luthor."_

She staggered to her feet, holding a wall for balance. "You're just a kid," she said, her words more like curses than parts of a sentence. "What do you think you can do to me?"

"I know exactly what I can do to you," I replied.

She leaned forwards, having to catch herself on a desk as she did. "Go on," she said mockingly.

My smirk grew into a shit-eating grin. "I'm telling Daddy," I said, and I stepped out of the way as she fell over.


	22. Chapter 22

Mercy barrelled into the darkened room, gun held high- which resulted in two other bodyguards and Luthor himself crashing into her when she abruptly stopped, leaving everyone in the room but myself and my father in a pile on the floor.

I glanced down from where I was sticking LED lights on the ceiling to try and dispel some of the darkness. Father- who, for the briefest of moments upon entering the room, had been red-faced and snarling- was looking down his nose at them when I looked up from the pile. He gave them all a disgusted look. "I don't even know why I _bother,"_ he said, glaring at them as they quickly got to their feet and trained their guns on the already-detained spy.

Luthor stepped around their guns, frowning, and bent down in front of the woman. He lifted her face from the floor- turning it this way and that- then stepped past her, too.

He looked down at the restraints that I'd hogtied her with- after all, I had a child-safe welder, and there was no way I was going to just leave her flopping around on the floor when I had no idea who she was, why she was here or _what_ she could do. (Other than get beaten up by a seven-year-old, of course, but to be fair that label now fit Parasite as well.)

Only then, once he'd taken in every last detail he could, did he look up at me.

"Sssup~," I said, stretching out the consonants like a stereotypical gum-chewing teenage rebel as I stuck another LED to the ceiling. (With glue, not welding. Welding LEDs to the ceiling would be silly when I just wanted a temporary fix.)

He glanced from me to the woman on the floor and back again. "You did this?" asked Luthor, his brow slightly quirked.

"Uh-huh," I replied.

He was not amused by my shenanigans. "Lena," he tutted, a note of disappointment in his voice, giving me The Look in the process.

"...Yes, Father," I corrected, stepping off the ladder I'd been standing on to take a more professional standing position.

He nodded, satisfied. "Talk me through how you did it," he said. "And what happened afterwards."

"Well… My programs alerted me to the fact that something weird was going on," I said. I gestured at the woman. "She'd snuck in using a bodysuit, and was heading over here. So I got my pocket stuff and the safety welder, counterhacked the elevators and security, cut a chunk out of the elevator and scribbled on it so the turrets would shoot that instead of me…"

"The turrets were _active?"_ said Luthor, his face serious, in the same too-calm way it had been when I'd told him his dinosaurs were wrong. Except… _more_ so, somehow.

It wasn't a face I'd seen on him before. I didn't like it.

I nodded. "They were shooting at me, and I didn't have any data lines, so I burned up the entire system," I said educationally. "They didn't shoot me after I did that. ...I think one exploded, we should probably get someone to check that."

"You got shot at by the security… so you ignored it, and you _blew it up?"_ questioned Mercy, an eyebrow quirked. "Christ, kid."

Luthor looked down at the woman. "...Remind me to bill her employers," he growled. "I don't appreciate being set back, especially not at such a critical time as now."

Mercy grunted, apparently having realised the same thing- though precisely what 'critical time' he meant I wasn't sure of. As far as I was aware, there hadn't been anything that guns would be useful for stopping loitering in the building's lower levels- it was pretty strange he'd say such a thing.

On the bright side, he _was_ blaming my shenanigans on somebody else rather than the other way around for once. It was a novel feeling, I assure you. He looked back up at me. "Continue."

"Once the turrets were out of the way, I counterhacked the doors as well," I obligingly continued. "I don't think she planned to be interrupted- there weren't any employers around, and I reached the door at about the same time as she did. Maybe a little later. I cut a hole in the door, welded the ice pack to make an improvised cryoexplosive, did the same to a chalk so I could grab her gun, and punched her in the unmentionables."

One of the other body guards snorted. Luthor tilted his head a little towards the sound- the mountain-sized man went pale, and tried to look professional. "She _also_ had a gun herself," he said, and I wasn't sure if he was impressed or infuriated by her ballsiness at having live weapons in _his_ tower. "Where is it?"

I stepped to the side of the room and pulled it out of a drawer. "Shotgun," I informed him, passing it over- he took it, looked over it, then passed it to Mercy for safekeeping. "Silenced, I think- it wasn't as loud as the turrets, at least. I distracted her with it so I could stab her with a drug from the desk, and then the lights went out because…" I paused. "...Actually, I don't _know_ why the lights went out."

"She planted bombs on the cables connecting LexCorp to the rest of the city," Father told me, his voice thick with displeasure. "Power, data… _All of them,"_ he spat viciously. "The lights failing was because she put a timer bomb on the backup generator, too. We're out of power."

 _"...Yeesh,"_ I muttered, thinking of the Metropolis heat. "That's not good, this time of year…"

"It's worse for the experiments," he growled. "The most vital ones, fortunately, had their own power sources. But the unsaved data? The refrigerated materials?" He gave the unconscious woman a kick, and I winced at the meaty sound it made. "I doubt she even _knows_ how much damage she's caused me." He glared at the woman for a moment longer, before turning to his guards. "Call the police," he said- well, he was still growling, but I got the impression that would be redundant to mention. "We're in no state to keep her captive ourselves. I'll make arrangements to ensure she remains captive."

I stayed quiet, deciding not to speak up about anything such as 'ethical treatment'. Not right now, at least.

Then Luthor _turned towards me with a smile on his face._ "You've done well, Lena," he said.

To make it absolutely clear- this was _not_ a smirk. This was _not_ a villainous grin. This was an honest-to-god _smile_ and it was _directed at me_.

Understandably, it freaked me right the fuck out.

"...Err, are you okay?" I questioned, completely honest in my concern for his emotional state. He glared at the woman on the floor, and my subconscious fears of him being replaced by a Skrull spontaneously evapourated into the aether. Then he looked back at me.

"Follow me, Lena," he told me. I did so.

I followed him out of the room- he directed his bodyguards to leave him behind. Despite trailing him all the way up the tower, I didn't say a word. It was only when we reached our destination, opening the door and beckoning me, that I spoke.

"...This is the place you use for business stuff," I said. This office was quite clearly on the list of places in LexCorp I was _not supposed to be in,_ even above most of the labs.

"I use it for what's important in life," Lex said. "Come in."

 _…_

I couldn't tell if I was supposed to be insulted by his words or filled with shame at my elation.

 _Let's be honest,_ I thought. _It's both._ I followed him in.

The room smelled of fine leather and carpet, without even a hint of tobacco. I glanced to the side of the room, and my eyes widened.

Luthor's pet shark swam beside the room in circles, watching us. Luthor noticed me staring. "She'll have to go on loan to the aquarium," he said. "Her generator won't last until the power is repaired…" The man paused, thoughtfully. "Though I suppose it would be a good opportunity to acquire a mate for her."

The shark was a whitetip, if I wasn't mistaken- famous for eating survivors of shipwrecks, and most certainly not an animal you'd see in a normal aquarium, let alone a skyscraper's private fish tank. I glanced at its hindfins. _No claspers,_ I noted. _He actually got its sex right. Huh._

He gestured to a fine-looking grey chair in front of his desk. Obligingly, I took a seat.

Luthor sat down opposite me, in his famous swivelling chair, backed by the glorious Metropolis skyline. He reached beside his desk, and I heard the sound of what was quite clearly a mini-fridge being opened.

 _He has a mini-fridge under his desk?_ I thought, baffled. _Does he… Does he eat snacks in here?_

He took out two glasses, and two drinks. One alcoholic, one not- he poured himself a glass of wine and me a glass of whatever I was being offered. "I never thought I'd see the day," he said, actually sounding sort of chuffed.

I took a sip of my drink. _Cranberry,_ I noted.  
"I didn't think you had a pragmatic streak in you," he told me. "And yet, you managed to halt somebody that the entirety of LexCorp's security could not."

"...Mmph," I grunted neutrally, shrugging.

"Lena, my dear," he chastised. "When somebody complements your achievements, there's no need to be _humble._ Show some _pride_. They say it's a sin, but..." Luthor chuckled. "God said the meek would inherit the Earth. And yet all my observations seem to indicate it's ruled by the mighty. Amusing, isn't it? So take the complement. Build on it, if you can."

"...Of course," I said, to amend my previous statement.

Lex took that as good enough, and continued as if he hadn't made a comment at all. "Not only did you manage such a remarkable achievement with nothing but your wits and your mastery of LexCorp's systems," he said, "your work is going strong. "From the experimental logs of the Oracle's Throne, it seems it's just about ready- and if outside forces are interested in it, as the agent's presence implies they are, then I _do_ think your machine is ready for use."

I thought through it carefully. Then I thought through the schematics in my head, the ones that Luthor didn't have. "...I'd agree with that," I said tentatively. "The safety features are in, the magnetic fields aren't disrupting normal neural processes, and the theory seems sound. I'd be comfortable spending a minute or so in there to try it out. Sure."

He did that creepy, actually-directing-positive-emotions smile again. He made a note in his calendar. "Excellent. I look forwards to seeing the results." With a soft _'whumph'_ , he closed the calendar to lean his chin on his knitted-together hands. "Now, then…" he said. "How would you feel about a research holiday?"

"...Bwuh?" I questioned, confused by the change of topic.

He had to give me another Look at my lack of eloquence before I remembered to clarify.

"A research holiday? Why now?" I asked, frowning. "I wasn't aware we even _had_ holidays."

"I- as normal- will be staying here, at LexCorp," he clarified. "As will Mercy. We're on uncertain grounds right now- I can _feel_ our stock market value dropping. However, as we lack the staff to protect all of us without the security systems active, I would feel more comfortable if you were _elsewhere_ for the time being."

"Ah," I replied. _Either pragmatism, or a cause for me to get really goddamn paranoid that he's figured it out._ "And the Psy- the Oracle's Throne?"

"We can have it installed on-board for the flight," he replied, waving a hand dismissively. "That should also keep it out of harm's reach, for the time being." He pulled something out of his drawer. "As for the location... Recently, I received an offer on a small Greek island. It's considered to have great mythological significance, a possible holy site for the Hellenic religions. I'd like you, Lena, to perform an archaeological dig and investigate for anything you might consider 'magical' in nature."

Greece… Ah. _Ooooh. Maybe I can get distracted and go hunt for Themiscyra for a while._ I grinned. "That sounds exciting!"

"I _thought_ you might appreciate the idea," Father responded. "It will be interesting to see if magic and psychic powers have any relationship, if this does become an extended project."

I sipped at my drink again. It was a rather tasteful drink, whatever it was, not like the very expensive but otherwise normal lemonade I often drank at restaurants. _I'll have to ask what it is in the future._

"Now, I do have a real meeting scheduled soon," Luthor clarified. "I'll have to be brief. Do you have any questions?"

I considered for a moment. "...Have you got any inklings of who might have done it?" I asked. "American government?"

He tilted his head. "Why would the _government_ do something so _foolish?"_

"Well I _did_ hack their files to steal their research data," I pointed out.

He shook his head. "No, it's _not_ the government," he said. "We have… an understanding. Whoever did this, they're somebody who thinks they can _afford_ to anger _me."_ He turned away, towards the skyline.

"...The only person I know who fits that description is Superman," I said, quite honestly, "and he doesn't seem the sort for intrigue."

He stood there angrily for a few moments longer. Then, Luthor chuckled. "I suppose not," he replied, still looking out of the window. He glanced back at me. "Return to what you were doing," he ordered. "We'll discuss the details later."

"See you then," I replied. I nodded politely. "Farewell, Father."

I stood up and headed for the door. I needed to finish work on preparing for the mission. I'd…

...probably be unable to access my crossbow files while the power was out, now I thought about it. _Hmm._ I'd have to throw that one on Wayne to deal with. And maybe start keeping backups of my files, if this was going to be a regular issue.

I'd have to dump most of the rest of the mission on Wayne too, actually. That was inconvenient.

The timing could have been intentional, but… I'd seen Father's face. This wasn't his doing- somebody had damaged his things, and to a degree that was _meaningful to him,_ on top of that. Somebody out there had balls the size of mola-molas.

I wasn't quite so certain it _wasn't_ the government, though. It was awfully convenient timing. And if somebody had the balls... well, Amanda Waller _definitely_ had balls big enough.

Because not even the bravest people had an easy time sassing Batman as an enemy. Waller was the sort to manage it with ease- and if she'd mess with Batman, Luthor could conceivably be a much easier target.

As I reached the threshold, Luthor called out to me. "Lena?" he said, calmly demanding my attention.

"Father?" I said, turning back towards him.

"You've been doing good work recently," he told me. "I'm proud of you. Carry on."

"...Thank you," I replied, and closed the door behind me. I carefully kept my face from twisting into a grimace until _after_ the door was shut. 


	23. Chapter 23

The light of day woke me from a sleep I didn't remember falling into. Slowly, groaning, I pushed myself up.

 _...Ow,_ I internally complained. _...I have no idea why my head hurts so much._

I did _not_ feel good, in any sense of the word. When I'd opened my eyes, my brain had felt something like those animal rights videos of chicks being poured into a giant spinning blade of doom. Right now it was closer to a banana in a blender, which- while still awful- was significantly better than a few seconds ago. It wasn't ideal, but hopefully in a few minutes it would pass.

I did still put a hand to my head, trying to blink away my blurry vision… and then paused. My fingers had caught on something smooth, a headband of some sort, and one I _certainly_ didn't remember putting on in the first place.

I ran my fingers along it again, building up a mental image of its shape. There was a pretty obvious conclusion, but it wasn't one I particularly liked.

Nevertheless... it was still correct. _Why am I wearing a psychic suppression band?_ I thought, as an uneasy feeling began to settle in my stomach.

I lifted two fingers to the suppression band's side. I knew what I was looking for- I designed it, after all. There was a dial on the side, with the ridge expected of a dial to actually make it usable. It was on full power, and more than that, it was locked into place- a safety measure so nobody could just (for example) turn off Ace's future version of the headband and give her an aneurysm. Which meant it wasn't just there by default, it was actively doing suppression.

Fortunately, I'd prepared an autoadjust button, just behind the dial itself. I moved my fingers back an inch and pressed it.

There was a sound of humming in my ears as the microcomputer started up. Then- _click click click._ The dial rotated around for the briefest of moments, and my vision flickered strangely- but just as quickly, it disappeared. I heard the lock come on and the computer stop- and checked it again.

 _Still ten,_ I thought. _So it's either buggy as hell or I've actually used the chair._

I paused, and checked my memories.

There was an extremely unnerving gap a little before I'd been scheduled to head onto the plane. That went doubly so considering my supposedly-eidetic memory shouldn't have had gaps in the first place! A bout of forgetfulness being directly before using what was effectively a brain surgery machine to channel interdimensional power directly through your synapses would be bad even if your memory was _terrible._

To summarise? This was a situation I very much wanted to check up on.

The only reason I didn't completely freak out was that every other memory I had was perfectly fine. To all appearances, it seemed to be a side effect of using the chair. The timeframes matched up with it being a suppression of short term memory, rather than any loss of it... At least, if I was still in the plane.  
I checked my surroundings- and my lips tightened. _Yep,_ I thought, _definitely not in a plane right now. Which means the gap is hours-long at least._

It was a bedroom- I had been resting in a pleasantly practical-looking bed, with white sheets. The room also looked significantly nicer than a plane's room should have been- in fact, planes generally didn't have bedrooms, let alone ones with a pleasant warm breeze drifting through great big glass windows on the room's sides. The angle of the light certainly suggested it was the day after.

Good news? I probably wasn't brain damaged. Bad news? I'd sat in the chair at some point during the flight- the very start, if I was correct about it blanking out my short-term memory- and had been out for long enough to get put in this comfy bed here without my knowledge.

The most logical explanation, since I wasn't in a hospital bed, was that I'd simply fallen asleep in the chair and somebody else put the band on after noticing that yes, I had spent far too long in there and that yes, it would be bad if the experiment had been misjudged and I created a planet-wide warp storm the moment I woke up.

Of course, there were issues with that. Like the fact that the failsafe wires should have been easily loud enough to wake me up when they stopped if I wasn't completely knocked out. Waking up in an unsupervised bedroom was enough to drive the worst worries from my mind, but when the worst case scenario is a psionically-induced aneurysm? _I could definitely do with access to a lab,_ I thought. _Maybe with a supercomputer so I can find stuff to nick from the CIA again._

Unfortunately, there probably weren't any laboratories around here that would let a small child in. And computers capable of hacking governments were right out. I'd brought a homemade laptop, similarly to my smartphone- it would let me cover the basics- but the facilities I'd been planned to have were more of the 'room with a desk and some boxes' sort than what I was used to.

(Admittedly, what I was used to was one of the finest facilities in the world, or at least one of the priciest for the space it took up. But nobody ever said I couldn't complain about lacking it.)

Getting up with only minor wobbling, I headed to the door and checked it. _It's not locked,_ I noted. That was also comforting- it most likely meant we'd reached our intended destination, rather than my headache being from getting conked in the head and transported to some top-secret facility to cut my brain into conveniently-analysable chunks.

The woman who'd brought the island to Lex's attention, one Ms. D. Stattaco, was (in his words) an 'upstart millionaire that, nevertheless, shows promise'. He'd come here on a business trip, and- between discussions- she'd suggested that a private island here might be useful. He hadn't accepted at the time, of course. When the tower went kaput, though? Well, he'd made the local government (or the bribeable folk that composed it, at least) a rather generous offer, and they'd accepted- as people tended to do when Luthor made an offer. Staying with her in particular was mainly for the extra security, rather than any current business transaction with her, though he did think 'we'd get along famously'.

I didn't quite know what that was supposed to mean- but if she could impress him, and he thought we'd get along, then hopefully it wasn't under assumptions we'd get along with kneecapping a bitch rather than discussing a palaeontological article.

The doorhandle was smooth and brassy- I opened the door to check the corridor. And it was... actually quite nice, I had to say. The sort of place I'd actually be willing to stay of my own accord, rather than just staying there because I lived in the place. If anything, it reminded me of Wayne Manor- except where the Manor was a big, warm, cozy, noble place, this was relaxed and open. The walls were white and smooth, and the floors were marble tile. Decorative images hung from the wall, and a smooth, tan carpet covered the floor.

But as much as I would have liked to stand there in awe over a rich person with good taste, I had more important things to do. Such as finding somebody who could confirm precisely what had happened while I was out. Feeling the stress starting to get to me, I began to hum as I stepped into the corridor- "Lonely girl, alone inside her head…"

The building seemed pretty empty, for the most part- a few glances outside revealed that there were in fact some guards, but their attention was directed outwards, not inwards. _Nothing out of the ordinary there, either._

I perked my head up at the sound of laughter, down the stairs- I followed it, still humming along, into the lobby. I headed through the wide open space and down the pristine staircases, then turned a corner towards the door of what I deemed to be the kitchen. I could hear male voices talking, plus one with a strong greek accent I presumed would be Ms Stattaco herself.

I passed the threshold, and took a look. _Yup,_ I thought. _Those are our bodyguards._ Four of them, to be precise- I'd never learned their names, since Lex tended to prefer the 'faceless goon' variety of bodyguard (with Mercy being the notable exception). They'd noticed already, as any good bodyguard did, though they would have been better if they'd remained near my room to explain the situation to me.

The fifth person there- a stocky woman in a fine black dress that neither meshed with the house nor the climate- only saw me when I coughed politely. She looked tall, and strong of build. Her features were equally strong, and I couldn't tell if she was muscular, overweight, or just big-boned.

All in all, she looked much like how I imagined one Mrs Trunchbull- except for her expression, because upon meeting my eyes, she gasped happily. When I met her eyes, they were giddy and wide like saucers, and I gulped at my impending doom.

 _So that's what he meant. Damn you, Lex, and damn your sense of humour as well._ "Umm... Hello, Ms Stattaco," I said.

I had only a moment to react as she charged- and alas, I did not escape in time.

I was suddenly being physically picked up and snuggled to death, and I flailed in dissatisfaction at my predicament. "Oh, you're adorable!" she cried, and for a moment I knew precisely how Lenny's puppy had felt immediately before that one spoiler before that one other spoiler that all high school children know- then she dumped me on my feet, dazed and disoriented, and just as helpless against her subsequent vigorous head-patting as I'd been to the alleged cuddles.

 _And Lex thinks she's 'promising'!_ I thought incredulously. At this rate, I was _never_ going to get a chance to discuss the events of the flight with my guards- but I sincerely doubted they'd be sniggering as much at the blunt force trauma to the cranium I was currently recieving if they thought anything had gone wrong themselves. "It's a-" I started with gritted teeth, before she bodily picked me up and hefted me onto her shoulder for more of what could debatably be considered hugs. "-a _pleasure to meet you,_ Ms Stattaco."

"Please!" she chortled, in a manner I could only describe as 'mirthy'. "Only my _uncles_ call me that. Just call me Deva, it's what everybody calls me!"

 _Deva Stattaco. That has to be a villain name,_ I thought, doing my best to spontaneously manifest heat vision in my snickering, distinctly unprofessional guards' direction. _She'll be trying to conquer Themiscyra the first time we go there, I know it._

Right now, though, she was dictating her plans to me- and I hadn't even had the chance to get changed. Honestly, this was the first time that being this small had gone badly for me, crazed lobster-men notwithstanding.

So she was probably a supervillain, and if she wasn't... well, in my mind? She was the foulest of villains already. Being manhandled and- as she'd just started to do- being hauled out of a nice, cool house to go and have a walk (or be carried) down a beach I'd already confirmed as absent of fossils could, to some degree, be considered 'a bad first impression'.

 _Oh well,_ I thought glumly, resigned to my predicament already. _At least she's apparently competent._

As I was hefted bodily out of the house, my bodyguards followed me- or, more accurately, followed Ms Stattaco- out to the gate. She waved two more bodyguards over. "Queen, Sanchez?" the big woman said. "Could you escort me and this adorable little lady to the beach?"

"Miss Luthor?" asked one of my own- presumably checking to see if he, or any of the others, were actually needed if we were guarded.

Well, the only reason I needed them normally was to keep it from people that I was, in fact, just as bulletproof as that alien who looks exactly like me. So that made it a decision between 'let them follow you down and presumably take pictures for Father to laugh at' or 'keep it as secret as possible and hope the crazy lady doesn't have a camera'.

"Go enjoy yourselves," I grumbled. _Because I sure as hell won't._ They headed back inside, still somewhat amused at my situation, while I wondered exactly how long this woman could heft me around before her arms got tired.

It was probably going to be quite a while, since the universe- and Ms Stattaco herself, of course- seemed unwilling to let me get back to some nice, calm, sensible mad science and brain surgery. Hopefully my brain wouldn't explode in a font of psionic power while she gushed on about the wonders of revani cake- I really, _really_ wanted to know precisely what had happened in the journey that got here in the first place.


	24. Chapter 24

In the course of my life as a tiny mad scientist, I have been through numerous situations. I have punched a guy whose skin was the same colour as that of Barney the Dinosaur, I have been kidnapped by a lobster man, I have frozen a (presumable) corporate spy's hand to their face, and I have eaten vast quantities of excessively sugary food.

Yet no situation has been quite as infuriating as actually _having a good time_ on my holiday when I'm supposed to be panicking about random memory loss.

Complaining about the food? No, I _love_ food and it's all incredibly flavourful. Complaining about the weather? It's gorgeously sunny and that anti-kryptonite ant DNA has the mundane utility of immunising me against plain ol' sunburn as well. Complaining about there being nothing to do? As well as general tourist stuff like tours and swimming, it's one of the most geologically-complex places in the world, and fossil-hunting here is following in the footsteps of Aristotle himself.

So yes, I _have_ been having a blast and regularly having to remember to keep glaring about that fact. Because what's the point of being a small child if you can't unreasonably sulk?

Of course, being an easily distracted person, I regularly forgot to perform the aforementioned glaring.

"-well, they were these great big massive animals," I rambled, going on about pliosaurs for what must have been the millionth time. "And they lived in the middle of the ocean."

"Ooh, like sea serpents?" questioned Deva.

"Sorta, but their relatives were the noodly ones that look like Nessie," I responded. "These ones were big enough to eat them- there's one fossil that shows a pliosaur must've lunged from below and ripped its head right off! Like a shark, except bigger, a reptile and generally just not very much like a shark."

Deva laughed. "Ah, sharks are marvellous creatures!" she said. "We have little ones here, with big tails like a whip." The big woman giggled. "None like the one that handsome father of yours keeps, though..."

 _Right,_ I thought, _I'm moving the conversation on and never thinking of that expression on her face again._ "So anyway, these big pliosaurs often have strange injuries on the tops of their heads. You see it in cats and dogs, where they bump their heads on the undersides of tables. But…" I shrugged. "They're in the middle of the ocean! There's literally nowhere to bump their heads! Unless aliens were taking boating trips to Earth a hundred million years ago or something?"

She chuckled at my failed attempt at humour- then clicked her fingers. "Ah, that reminds me!" she exclaimed. "Mr Luthor was saying he's finally got a deadline for the end of construction, which means we can head up to that lovely little island soon! And then you can head back from your holiday once it's done, dearie!"

"Oh!" I replied. "That'll be good. I haven't talked to Tim in ages, and I haven't seen if Superman's punched anything recently, either…"

Deva put a finger to her chin, thinking hard. "Well, I did hear something about him meeting some alien fellow tomorrow," she told me. "The government made contact after LexCorp found transmissions from outer space. How _exciting!"_

 _That's Brainiac, I suppose?_ I noted. _Damn, I'm going to miss all the excitement._ "I'm surprised he didn't just do it all himself," I said. "That's how he usually does things."

She rolled her eyes dramatically. "Sweetheart, if his building's not working, he's not going to be _able_ to do anything with it," she informed me. "It's just good business sense, really. He has a great sense for _many_ things, really…"

The woman paused, and looked me in the eyes for a few moments. I raised an eyebrow, having added the time five seconds previous to my memory blacklist already.

"You know, I've been wondering," she said with as much thoughtfulness as I thought she was capable of. "I spent a _long_ time looking at your father's eyes…"

 _Stop iiiiiiiit,_ I thought, extremely maturely. _Stop swooning at my biological progenitor, it's grooooss._

"...and they're so bold, so _dark!_ But yours are lighter," she pointed out. "Much lighter! Almost silvery..." She giggled. "I'm sure you'll have boys falling over you with a glance when you're older!"

 _"Eww,"_ I said, vocalising the opinion this time. Deva laughed at that, somehow managing to guffaw while remaining at a conversational volume.

"Oh, that's what they _all_ say," she chuckled as soon as the real laughter had passed. "But trust me, when you're a teenager, you'll be wrapping them around your finger… But I'm getting distracted! I do hope you don't mind my gossip, but…" She dropped her voice to a stage whisper. "Who _did_ you get those eyes from?"

I had a brief mental image of myself in a baby carriage, being pushed by an adoring giant ant, with Lex Luthor's arm wrapped around the arthropod adoringly.

 _At this rate,_ I internally groaned, _my memory blacklist is going to need more paper._

Suppressing a shudder, I shrugged. "I didn't look up the non-Luthory bit of my family tree," I told her honestly, though that was- of course- completely unrelated to her question. If she happened to assume I'd said something relevant, well, that was her fault really.

"Ah," she replied disappointedly- before straightening up again, full of enthusiasm. "But there'll be plenty of time to gossip later! We have a boat trip to plan!"

I nodded, glad to be back to the previous topic- the current one had been giving me too many reasons to invent brain bleach. "Right," I agreed. "What's the island called?"

"Oh, it doesn't have a name," she replied. "Not something you'd use outside of paperwork, anyway! It's often concealed by sea fogs. I believe that's why your dear old father was so interested in it!" She laughed. "He _does_ like his secrecy, doesn't he?"

I rolled my eyes. "You have no idea."

"Well!" She stood up, hefting her heavy-looking handbag from the floor as she did. "There'll be plenty of time to gossip on the boat. We'll be headed out on…" She counted the days on her fingers. "...Thursday- I'll have my secretary make a list of things to bring for you."

I blinked. "You have a secretary?" I asked.

Deva laughed again. "My dear, did you think I just sat around here _all_ the time? No, just most of the time," she added, amused by her own words. "I have a whole company to vaguely look over once in a while!"

She turned, still cheery, and headed out of the room- leaving me to ponder some things.

Ms Stattaco had been correct- honestly, I _had_ just thought she sat around all day. Her diplomatic abilities seemed like what had impressed Father, especially seeing as she'd somehow managed to keep me from glaring at everything and anything. It had certainly impressed me, considering I generally had a much more negative opinion of people who occasionally treated me like a cuddly toy. On further thought, though, Lex wasn't the sort to have a high opinion of diplomats.

So that raised a question I hadn't really been giving all too much thought to- why _did_ she impress him?

My mind immediately went to the same place as every other thought I'd blacklisted today, at which point I carefully filed the blacklist into a mental blacklist of its own. Once that task was completed, my regularly-scheduled trains of thought were fortunately able to resume.

Anybody who had both gained and kept Lex's approval was, as a general rule, somebody who was doing at least something that was unpleasant. And seeing as I had literally been living in her house, it would be prudent to know.

Doubly-so considering I still didn't know if our destination was Themiscyra.

And yet… I'd been keeping a track of what both mine and her bodyguards had been up to, and the lack of anything suspicious had just made me even more suspicious. If something had gone wrong with the Psychicotron- which it had, current lack of obvious cerebral hemorrhaging notwithstanding- and the people assigned to my safety hadn't noticed, they weren't doing their job and I wanted to know why.

I trotted up the stairs to my room, and pulled something out from under my desk.

The phone I'd created possessed a lot of extraneous parts, and the stuff in my pockets had included a few Lenatech batteries and a screwdriver. Since nobody was actually going to be able to figure out what on earth anything in my phone did, I'd hid a few gadgets inside- in this case, I popped off the case and carefully retrieved two halves of a single, small tracking device.

That was the situation- I wanted to know what both her and my guards were up to, and I only had the resources for one. Alas, it hadn't been big enough for two- the reciever had taken up most of the space that I hadn't already cannibalised for a seashell-testing kit.

 _...What? I'm a reasonably-moral mad scientist at the seaside. It's not like I can attach lasers to sharks while I'm here._

Still, while I wasn't regretting the new ideas I'd had regarding how to make extremely practical tiny adorable armour, I'd rather have had more than one tracking device to use. They weren't designed to last long- after all, the whole 'picking a tracking device out of your clothes' trope was ridiculous but had a tendency to inevitably result in the trackers being found anyway.

To avert this, they worked for no longer than a day. I could tune it a bit, but inevitably, their own charge made them crumble into dirt by the end of their appointed lifespan. At that point, perhaps it'd be mistaken for something harmless like a cigarette butt.

With my luck they'd still be found out.

I huffed in irritation. I was suspicious of the people around me, but my suspicions were that they were doing something suspicious rather than that they were doing anything in particular. And really, active investigation needed more than just suspicion- it needed a hypothesis to confirm or deny, and right now, I had precisely zero of them.

The best thing, of course, was to ask myself what Batman would do in this situation.

Yes, I know- I could just call him, but I'd kinda gotten distracted by having a holiday and now I was too embarrassed to call him about work stuff in the middle of it. Besides, this was probably a test of some sort that I was expected to perform.

Because Luthor. Sigh.

So, what would Batman do?

 _...Well,_ I thought, _Batman would just have more trackers._

I prodded the seashell testing kit I'd left on the desk with my screwdriver. "Stupid technology," I muttered. "Not being available without an arbitrary level of resources…"

Hearing footsteps coming up the stairs, I clicked my phone lid back on. There was a knock on the door not a moment later.

"Come in!" I called.

One of Deva's bodyguards pushed the door open. "Ms. Luthor," he said respectfully- I recognised him as Deva's bodyguard Queen (no relation to the famous one). Ms Stattaco had apparently met him being fired as a bouncer due to… okay, I hadn't really listened after that point since I'd been distracted by a polychaete I'd subsequently caught in a jar for a little while, but she'd probably been implying the man was at least somewhat sympathetic.

Also the fact he had both shared a last name with Green Arrow and had managed to avoid failing horribly at anything in particular made him my least-unfavourite bodyguard by default. But I digress.

"Mr Queen," I responded politely, nodding, and fastening the screws on my phone again. "Did you need something?"

He frowned minutely. "Deva would like to know if you have any activities planned for the island," he stated. All business, that guy was- I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if he turned out to be a robot or something.

"Does she have a map?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"I'll just bring a bit of everything and figure out when I get there," I told him. "Thank you for asking, though."

"We'll carry it onto the boat closer to the time," he replied. "Tell Deva when it's ready."

"Of course. Anything else?" I asked. He shook his head, and the door shut softly as he left.

 _Hmm… Doing tests on the island might be a good way to figure out if anything's odd here,_ I considered. _I can make it there, and find out if anything's wrong with the island when I arrive..._

I shook my head. There were- of course- some obvious flaws in this plan.

Firstly, I was still being pretty passive. If it turned out that going to the island in the first place constituted a problem- be it on purpose or just by not knowing that it may or may not be an island covered in glorified sexists (extremely honourable and heroic ones with great respect for peace and whatnot, but still technically sexists)- then I would be having an issue.

Secondly… okay, yeah, that was _basically_ my entire problem. But really, the only reason I was being passive was because I couldn't decide on an appropriate hypothesis to try and test. If there was a reason for me to not go with the Batman school of superheroics and just pre-plan everything in advance, my prediction skills were probably it- everything else suited me just fine, but planning in advance? No, thanks _._

 _But,_ I decided with a sigh, _it's a good idea anyway._

From a mental look over what little information I'd been given, I was putting it down as 'probably not Themiscyra'. That island was certainly greek and mythological, but it wasn't protected by fogs- it was protected by… something that wasn't fogs, because there was a distinct lack of fog by all accounts (including out-of-universe animated ones).

So this was probably somewhere else.

"Mmph," I mumbled to myself, repeating my thoughts out loud to try and push my thoughts off their current train and onto the next station. "There's fog, and Father found it interesting enough to buy…"

That seemed like a worthwhile train of thought. _What does Father like?_ I questioned. _And why would he buy the island?_

Well, the obvious answer for what he liked was 'anything he could sell to the military'. So that narrowed down what his goal might be.

And, notably, this whole series of events didn't happen without my existence. _So what changes to his decision-making have I made recently?_

Again, there was an obvious answer. And it was backed up by his own words- he'd mentioned about magic, hadn't he? _It's considered to have great mythological significance,_ he'd said, _a possible holy site for the Hellenic religions._ If it was a confirmed one, he'd have stated it outright- and if it had convincing evidence for being a source of something militarily-interesting, he'd have already sent somebody over to investigate.

So it wasn't Themiscyra, as established by the fog's presence. And it wouldn't be some one-off artifact of power, either- there wasn't any profit in that, after all, was there?

 _If there's something there, it's either researchable or reproducible,_ I thought, face scrunched up in thought. _What's a reproducible military weapon in greek mythology…?_

For the third time, there was an obvious answer. Obvious? Definitely. Correct?

Hopefully. _Or hopefully not,_ I amended, _considering the wildlife we'll be seeing if the guess is correct after all._

But either way, I had something to prepare for.

Heading out from my little guest bedroom, I knocked on the adjacent door. "It's Lena," I called.

The door opened. "Ms Luthor," said one of my own guards, doing an admirable job at looking professional after I'd interrupted their game of… I peeked further around the corner.

 _...Is that a game of Xenocards?_ I asked myself, blinking.

He closed the door on what may or may not have been a children's card game. _Oh, right._ I looked up at him, and smiled sweetly. "Hello, Hank," I said, smiling as sweetly as I could. "I don't suppose any of you would mind escorting me to the nearest library? I want to get a little bit of light reading done…"

I didn't know what Batman would do for information-gathering on Deva or the bodyguards right now. But if my suspicions were correct...

Well, even if I was wrong, it would be entertaining anyway to read up on mythological monsters.


End file.
